Small Holdings 



desperately for a living, fights a losing battle, 

 and is an unsatisfactory tenant. 



Anyone who has experience of allotments on 

 poor soil will tell a woeful story of spoiled land, 

 of tenants too poor to pay rent, too poor to 

 farm decently for themselves or their landlord, 

 and finally giving up the ghost altogether. 

 The landlord should be at liberty to treat his 

 property to the best advantage. " But," says the 

 critic, " to dispose of it in large farms and refuse 

 the small holder is against the public weal"; 

 oblivious to the facts and heedless of explanation. 

 Much good might be done if attention were 

 confined to those parts where small holdings are 

 economically possible and a proved success. 



The few remaining estates might be bought 

 out and cut up. It is true there are not many, 

 for the richest soil is not favourable to the large 

 landowner. A hundred thousand pounds will 

 buy a mansion and miles of wooded country 

 in some counties, but where land is worth fifty 

 or a hundred pounds an acre it would not go 

 far, whilst generally in such parts it is bleak and 

 treeless, and mansions conspicuous by their 

 absence. One would expect the owner of a large 

 estate in such a part to sell out and buy a county 

 in Scotland, or a province in South America, 

 where he could be as feudal as he pleased, and see 



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