358 THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



words have already been quoted : " Small owners in France 

 and Flanders are very poor, respecting money, but very 

 happy respecting their mode of existence." 



There is certainly incomparably more stability about the 

 political and economic condition of the small-farming 

 districts. It is large-farming districts which send emigrants 

 abroad. Everywhere also it is only from the large-farming 

 districts that revolutionary Socialism comes. It is so in 

 Germany. The late Dr. Liebknecht, the comrade and 

 coetanean of Bebel, admitted this. It is so in Italy. My 

 socialist friends in the Romagna, which is a socialist strong- 

 hold — as a bequest from papal misgovernment — have 

 complained to me bitterly that there was no doing anything 

 with the peasantry of Tuscany who, being comfortably 

 situated on their peasant properties, " are all reactionaries." 

 So would the Romagnoles be if they had the Tuscan peasants' 

 prospering freehold farms. The anti-revolutionary tendency 

 of the French small proprietaire has often been remarked 

 upon. 



Again, it is contended that small ownership must needs 

 sooner or later what Frenchmen call " pulverise " the 

 land, cut it up into such diminutive fragments as must be 

 detrimental to good husbandry and good living. All 

 pertinent facts on record conclusively disprove that. In 

 the most " pulverised " part of Germany — that is, in the 

 South-west, where small ownership has been in operation 

 since the early Middle Ages, and where average holdings 

 go down, e.g. in Wiirttemberg, to f acre or, more correctly 

 (if the forest area is deducted) to ^ acre — ^an official 

 inquiry has shown that land is to-day not one whit more 

 subdivided, even to a fractional extent, than it was at the 

 time of the Thirty Years' War, nearly 300 years ago. In 

 electoral Hesse there are actually no fewer holdings than 

 there were in 1760. French soil is no more subdivided than 

 it was at the time of the great Revolution. Land being 

 readily saleable, the matter rights itself by corresponding 

 buying up. In Oldenburg it has been observed that sub- 

 division and agglomeration adapt themselves automatically 

 to circumstances. In good times the wealthier men buy 



