3i6 THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



realise the responsibility that rests upon them. They have 

 grown in intelligence, in businesslike capacity, in judicious 

 application of their labour. There is more. That important 

 factor in national economy upon which Mr. Chamberlain 

 not without good reason laid so great stress, that is, Home 

 trade, has been brought to feel the benefits of a larger and 

 better-to-do rural population. Your big squire may keep a 

 goodly household, like the Abbot of Canterbury of the ballad, 

 with his "housekeeping of high renown," buy wines from 

 France and costly luxuries and works of art from all foreign 

 climes, which make a brave show, and the expense incurred 

 upon which strikes the plain man with awe. But your village 

 full of small folk nourishes home trade — individually less but 

 collectively much more — buying what comes from home 

 workshops and employs home labour. There is no need 

 in this matter of harping upon the example of Germany — 

 although Germany contributes a goodly part to the col- 

 lective picture. Look down from the top of the Vosges 

 upon smiling Alsace, or from the Drachenfels upon sheltered 

 Rhineland, cycle through the densely-peopled Palatinate, 

 or through laughing Touraine or sunny Languedoc, wend 

 your steps even through comparatively large-farming Nor- 

 mandy, follow the course of one of the happy valleys of 

 Switzerland, pursue your tour through Lombardy or Tus- 

 cany — everywhere on the Continent the same attractive 

 picture meets your eye and tells you that you are not at 

 home, not in only whilom " Merrie England." And no one 

 wants to get away from such " congestion," such subdividing 

 by the law of equal inheritance. " Repeal the law of sub- 

 division, of equality of shares in inheritance," so remarked 

 to me upon my inquiry statesmen entrusted with the 

 supervision of Agriculture in practically all countries in 

 apparently excessively subdivided South-western Germany, 

 " why, the thing is inconceivable ; there would be a revolu- 

 tion." And it pays the Nation. " How is it that France 

 has suffered so much less from ' agricultural depression ' 

 than other countries ? " So asked people at the great 

 International Agricultural Congress at Paris in 1889. 

 " Because its land is so largely subdivided," so replied the 



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