424 LAND REFORM 



claims further that in no other direction that has 

 hitherto been indicated can a permanent remedy be 

 found. What is wanted is a man able to place the 

 scheme as a whole before the country and urge its 

 acceptance as a natio7ial policy. He need not be an 

 agriculturist, but he must be a statesman. Stein and 

 Hardenberg did not act as agriculturists, but as pat- 

 riotic foresighted men, who sought and found in the 

 land reforms they adopted a remedy for their country's 

 distress. 



In discussing in these pages the general question of 

 land reform, the writer has tried (how feebly he well 

 knows) to revive a public interest in agriculture, to 

 place that industry in the foremost place now occu- 

 pied by commercialism, and especially to recall the 

 parts played in our history by those grand classes, 

 the "small landed gentry," the "yeoman," and the 

 " peasant proprietor." These classes, though ruined, 

 were not destroyed. Their offspring were scattered 

 in many directions at home and abroad. Of this stock 

 came the Raleighs, the Clives, the Drakes, and other 

 empire-makers ; many of the great inventors, masters 

 of arts, science, and literature, as well as brilliant 

 lawyers, soldiers and sailors.^ Labourers still on the 



^ It is interesting to notice the distinguished men who have sprung 

 from the peasant and yeoman classes. Thackeray was descended from 

 a yeoman family. The father and mother of Telford, the great engineer, 

 worked as labourers in the field. Sir William Cubitt was the son of a 

 miller. Compton, the inventor of the spinning mule ; Chantrey, the great 

 sculptor; Scorcsby, the Arctic navigator; John Forbes Watson, the 

 physician; George Smith, the historian; James Beattie, the poet; Bewick, 

 the wood engraver, and Samuel Butler were all sons of small farmers. 

 W. G. Fox, the free trade writer and preacher; Clark, the antiquary; 

 William Cobbelt ; Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood ; 

 Richard Baxter; De Foe, and many others were of the peasant or yeo- 

 man class. John Nicoll, the poet; John Mole, the mathematician; 

 Montgomery, the poet; Ferguson, the astronomer; Sir Edward Banks, 



