OTHER SCHEMES OF LAND REFORM 263 



of the country as far as possible permanently into the 

 hands of occupying owners. 



There is no doubt that in England in past times 

 large numbers of peasants' and yeomen's holdings 

 have been bought and consolidated into laro^e estates 

 by wealthy men, who have offered such prices for the 

 holdings as the owners felt bound to accept. To this 

 cause mainly is due the disappearance, to such a large 

 extent, of that fine class of freeholders called "states- 

 men," for the loss of whom, from a national point of 

 view, no money can compensate. The following is 

 an extract from a very interesting account of these 

 hardy husbandmen and of their exit from the soil : — 



" These independent farmers, with their well-marked 

 qualities of persistence, industry, and suspicion, due to 

 their retired position, are worth careful study. . . . We 

 are told that at the beginning of last century there 

 w-ere about seven thousand statesmen in Cumberland. 

 . . . The lads and damsels saw no disgrace or degj-a- 

 dation in farmwork, and followed it with a due sense 

 of the social unity involved in it and with the native 

 pride of an independent community. For the farm 

 was a common duty and a common pleasure also." 



The writer goes on to describe the falling prices of 

 produce and the heavier charges on the land which 

 caused these honest statesmen to drift slowly into diffi- 

 culties, and adds : — 



" While there was less and less hope of making 

 a comfortable livelihood out of the land and the farmer's 

 heart failed him, the value of his freehold still tended 

 to rise, not to fall, as it should have done. So that as 

 the difficulties of living increased, the temptation to 

 throw the whole thing up and try some other way of 

 living increased also. There were rich people, iron- 



