SMALL HOLDINGS. 325 



form a decided minority. x\nd even to honest goodwill 

 there are so many difficulties in the way, that progress 

 cannot be rapid. Is land to be purchased " on the 

 chance " ? Or are applicants to be made to wait, as we 

 do in the lift of a Tube, till there are a sufficient number to 

 satisfy ? There is more than this. And then there is 

 the question of money. In the first stages of the operation 

 of the measure, Small Holdings Commissioners were greatly 

 astonished at the amount of money produced in ringing 

 cash by some applicants — to all appearance bona-fide 

 agricultural labourers — for full-sized holdings. It appears 

 to have been inferred from this that money was plentiful 

 in all applicants' pockets. But this is distinctly not the 

 case. And when it came to be understood that, hke the 

 man of the anecdote, who " of his great bounty built 

 this bridge at the expense of the County," the County Coun- 

 cils were going to grant leases of land of which the lessee 

 was to pay for the freehold rights, which in their turn were 

 to be retained by the County Council — leases being for 

 short terms only, without even a guarantee given to the 

 tenant for renewal — applicants and their friends came dis- 

 tinctly to " smeU a rat," and their ardour cooled consider- 

 ably. The scheme was too little considered, and experience 

 collected was too little taken to heart. We have been 

 used to measures for purchase — like Lord Chaplin's Act 

 — under which the new settler is expected to pay down 

 twenty per cent, of the purchase price, and which for that 

 very reason have failed to prove successful. How the thing 

 may be successfully managed has since been shown on the 

 Duke of Bedford's estate at Maulden, where the offer of 

 freehold holdings attracted veritable hosts of applicants 

 and not a penny has been lost to the vendor. 



There is at least one further reason accounting for our 

 disappointment. Those of us who wish to see small hold- 

 ings estabhshed cry out for them in lusty chorus. But 

 we are not in any wise agreed among ourselves as to what 

 it precisely is that each of us wants. So we drift this way 

 and that, and at times, Hke Jason's warriors in Colchis, 

 fall a-fighting among ourselves. One evidence of this is 



