270 LAND REFORM 



It is a distressing reflection that during the years 

 these reforms were being carried out in Germany our 

 own Parliament was actively legislating in quite an 

 opposite direction. The territorial party in England 

 were carrying out their policy — a policy which some 

 of our statesmen gravely questioned, though they 

 acquiesced in it — of depriving the rural population of 

 all personal interest in the soil they cultivated. 



The contrast between the results which followed 

 these two opposite policies is sufficient of itself, with- 

 out further argument, to convince any impartial mind. 

 In the one country the cultivators steadily improved 

 in independence, contentment, and material pros- 

 perity; in the other country the same classes as 

 steadily sunk into a condition discreditable to its 

 national life. 



William Howitt, speaking from observation of these 

 two conditions, states : — 



"In Germany the peasants are the great and ever- 

 present objects of country life. They are the great 

 population of the country, because they themselves 

 are the possessors. . . . The peasants are not, as with 

 us, for the most part totally cut off from property in 

 the soil they cultivate, totally dependent on the 

 labour afforded by others ; they are themselves the 

 proprietors. It is perhaps from this cause that 

 they are probably the most industrious peasantry in 

 the world. They labour busily, early and late, be- 

 cause they feel that they are labouring for them- 

 selves. . . . The German peasants work hard, but 

 they have no actual want. Every man has his 

 house, his orchard, his roadside, fruit-trees, etc. . . . 

 The English peasant is so cut off from the idea of 

 property that he comes habitually to look upon it as 

 a thing from which he is warned by the laws of the 



