SMALL HOLDINGS. 357 



proprietorship — upon which the late Lady Verney in her 

 many writings laid particular stress — is this, that peasant 

 proprietorship means poor housing and poor living — poorer 

 housing and poorer living than among ourselves for paid 

 farm service. Now, letting alone that the whole tendency 

 of the time is not in the direction of service, but in that 

 of emancipation and self-employment, a study of the facts 

 in nowise bears out this allegation. Lady Verney, with 

 all her knowledge of France, has evidently compared things 

 which will not bear comparison. She has judged hardship 

 in the case of the very small French peasant what is by 

 no means hardship to him — any more than the rye bread 

 and chicory coffee habitually consumed in Germany consti- 

 tute a hardship to the German peasant — or to Germans 

 much above his rank — though our farm servants might make 

 wry faces over these things. She should have seen the 

 grimaces which French and Italian delegates at some of 

 our British Co-operative Congresses made when they were 

 given very good dinners — without wine. Alia vita, alia 

 diaeta. The Indian may be as happy over his paddy as 

 the Briton over his meat. Quite apart from that, recent 

 inquiries do not at all prove that either our farm servants 

 or our farm labourers fare particularly well — even though 

 a recently departed statesman would have it — in Parliament 

 —that in his own county, Gloucestershire, agricultural 

 labourers find means of consuming plenty of meat on their 

 weekly wage of 13s. or 14s. a week. Our " Egyptian 

 fieshpots " are for the most part a creation of the imagina- 

 tion. The French peasant is as happy over his pain perce 

 and his choppe or carafon of Aramon as are men of his class 

 in our country over their pint of beer and their cut of meat. 

 His wife certainly provides him with more tasty pot-au-feu 

 and vegetables. But it is not eating that makes the happy 

 mortal. The continental peasant owner is a free man. 

 His holding gives him what he wants and allows him to 

 fix his own hours of work. It induces him to work hard 

 — no one can deny that ; but it does not perforce make 

 him a drudge. It does not place him on a lower grade of 

 humanity than his neighbours. Mr. Prothero's very true 



