294 THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



nudum pactum, a " leonine society," one would like to ask 

 what is. Our man cannot even call upon his landlord to 

 carry out the necessary repairs or alterations, unless the 

 local authority befriends him. He is tied by the leg and 

 has a convict's cannon ball locked to his ankle. A " home " 

 so secured is not a home at all. There is no feeling of a 

 " home " about it. There are no lares and penates to hallow 

 it. There is no sentimental halo encircling it, nothing that 

 the man's children could look upon with affection and 

 confidence in its permanency. It cannot inspire our man 

 or his family with any love for his position and his dwelling- 

 place — more especially with the dismal prospect of a help- 

 less, impoverished and painful old age before him. 



There is outside our own country no part of civilised 

 Europe in which a similar state of things prevails — except 

 it be in the far north-east corner of Prussia and in Mecklen- 

 burg, where oppressive junker rule has, under what is appro- 

 priately termed " englische Zustande," that is, " conditions 

 similar to those prevailing in England," established some- 

 thing of the same sort, with the express object of tying down 

 the labourer in absolute subjection. There landed proprietors 

 — generally farming their own land^have set up labourers' 

 dwellings which go inseparably with the employment. One 

 reason was, that in those thinly peopled provinces, where 

 immense breaks of broad acres prevail, villages are few and 

 far between and there is accordingly a dearth of labour. 

 However, a distinct object of the move was also to bring 

 the men and women under an iron yoke. But even there 

 housing is at any rate not scarce. There is enough for all 

 labour that is wanted. Labour need not go about seeking 

 and begging. And there is furthermore some land to 

 cultivate attached to the house, however little it be- — some 

 land on which children may learn how to raise useful or 

 ornamental plants and on which young and old may expend 

 their surplus labour and bestow their affection. Such 

 dwellings are generally grouped together and so provide 

 something of society and fellowship at the same time. 



Elsewhere throughout on the Continent the agricultural 

 labourer has his own house, owned, or held independently, 



