i6 LAND REFORM 



plant and machinery, to allow those orders to pass to 

 foreign makers who showed more adaptability in their 

 methods of production. Only by a system of peasant 

 proprietary can this vast amount of trade be secured 

 for our own people. There is no other way. Peasant 

 proprietary existed at one time in this country for the 

 country's good. It exists now in other lands, where 

 it is prized as a firm basis of national strength and 

 security. It was destroyed in England largely by 

 legislation. It can be restored only by the same 

 means. 



M. de Laveleye (the Belgian Rural Economist) 

 stated that " peasant proprietary is a lost art in 

 England." It is true that ages of class legislation — 

 most of it unjust, much of it iniquitous — has divorced 

 the peasant from the soil ; reduced him to a mere 

 wage-receiver and left him with no prospect but 

 that of private charity or parish relief. Other 

 nations have pursued precisely the opposite policy. 

 They held it to be in their best interests, at all 

 costs, to root the peasant in the soil instead of 

 squeezing him off. Stein and Hardenberg in Prussia 

 dealt with the question in its most complicated 

 form. To the bitter opposition of the feudal powers, 

 and to the warnings of the economist, they had 

 practically one reply, which was to the effect that 

 a numerous rural population, possessing interests in 

 the land, was of vital importance to the state — to its 

 health, strength, and permanence. Subsequent events 

 have abundantly vindicated the wisdom of their states- 

 manship. 



Mr. Thornton — one of the greatest authorities — 

 in his " Plea for Peasant Proprietary" states that "as 

 long as the connection of the peasantry with the land 



