SMALL HOLDINGS. 355 



up there at all. But they offer a good face to the sun. All 

 the soil that is up there has been carried up on human backs 

 in hottes. No tenant would take the trouble to do this. 

 The owner does not count the labour. He secures his little 

 field which bears him such and such produce, benefiting 

 at once himself and the country. He works, not for a short 

 term, but for all futurity. And it is such outlay of labour 

 which enriches the Nation, while at the same time it rivets 

 the affection of the owner indestructibly to his holding. 

 " The best kind of man, the strongest and most vigorous 

 kind of man," so says Mrs. Rowland Wilkins — whom her 

 answer to Sir Gilbert Parker's pamphlet, " The Land for the 

 People," has shown to be a pronounced advocate of tenant 

 holdings — in her evidence given before the Small Holdings 

 Committee, " would aim at a freehold," and " you will 

 always get a class of men who will think the freehold is 

 the best thing to aim at." With good reason, too. It 

 is objected that the small holder may want after a time to 

 go away and lay out his labour upon a more promising 

 holding. In that thought, as it happens, you get away 

 from the idea of " home," which in the majority of cases 

 is likely to be the most cherished and also, from a national 

 point of view, the most worthy of consideration. There 

 are however men of this sort, who look only at the business 

 side — taking out of their holding what they can, so as to 

 make the maximum of money out of it, and, having done 

 so, to move farther and continue on a larger scale. These 

 men distinctly have their value and a ready opening should 

 be reserved for them. But they do not improve the land 

 permanently ; nor do they yield that which most of us desire 

 to see established, that is, a permanent rural population 

 making the country the richer and the happier. They 

 remind one of the adventurers who go into a far country 

 to exploit there the virgin riches of a fruitful soil and come 

 home to spend the yield upon themselves. That is not 

 precisely what the Nation wants. The number of these 

 men is, as it happens, comparatively small ; and there is 

 no reason why for their sake the majority of their class 

 should be deprived of more enduring benefits, of common 



