SMALL HOLDINGS. 321 



be greatly needed. The old abuses of overstocking and of 

 " thrusting with side and with shoulder," on the part of 

 the strong, and of bad management, may be effectually 

 guarded against. On his Maulden settlement Mr. Prothero 

 has advisedly introduced a common pasture. In Germany 

 common pastures are now being provided by means of 

 Co-operation. And in Italy there is a strong movement 

 in favour of Demani collettivi, of which, among other leading 

 men, the late Prime Minister, Signor Tittoni, is a spirited 

 advocate. The Common gone, the independently owned 

 cottage was bound to go too, and with the cottage also the 

 sturdy independence, the manly freedom and the trustful 

 confidence of the rural labouring citizen, who, after feeUng 

 that he was an integral, fully righted factor in the body politic, 

 fit to meet his employer — if he had one — without having 

 to tell himself that the other was his master, upon whose 

 favour his miserable livehhood depended, sank down to 

 the position of a mere helot. The change has not been a 

 change for the better in its effect either upon the small 

 man or upon the Nation, nor upon the employer either. 



Quite of late a new tendency of feeling has set in, revealing 

 the discovery made in the public mind that such agglomerat- 

 ing, all-engrossing policy has from a national point of view 

 proved a mistake. The effervescence of satisfaction at 

 the conquest gained by enclosure being spent, the Nation 

 has awakened to the painful discernment of the sober truth 

 of the want of labour, and dullness and misery prevailing 

 among the changed rural community. That defect, so 

 it is realised, must be corrected, as Lord Selborne has put 

 it, when Minister of Agriculture, almost at all costs. " There 

 is nothing so urgent as an increase of the number of the 

 people Uving on the rural land of England." People have 

 been clamouring for small holdings ever since Mr, Jesse 

 CoUings upset a Conservative Government with his famous 

 " Three Acres and a Cow." And with advancing time the 

 movement has rather grown than lost in impetus. It began 

 on one side of the political boundary. The active labours 

 of the late Lord Ilkeston's Committee should not now be 

 forgotten. However, the promotion of a Small Holdings 



Y 



