Great Estates 



their social eminence, and their political signifi- 

 cance. The process began with the French Revolu- 

 tion, and its last phase was the Veto Bill (191 1). 

 For good or ill, our great estates are breaking up, 

 they are going and will go with accelerating force. 

 If we wish to know how rapidly the process will 

 continue, we must look abroad where it has been 

 in force a longer time. On the Continent great 

 estates have gone, apparently never to return, 

 for once the people obtain possession of the soil 

 they become tenacious. In Germany and France 

 the tenants own 86 and 88 per cent respectively 

 of their farms, in comparison to our 12 per cent. 

 Exclusive of allotments and holdings under one 

 acre, the average farm in Belgium is 14! acres, 

 in France 24 acres, in England 70 acres. Belgium, 

 only twice the size of Yorkshire, has 719,986 

 landowners, three-quarters of whom have less 

 than five acres, and 95 per cent less than 25 acres 

 each. This is small holding with a vengeance! 

 A striking contrast between this and England, 

 where many hundreds own more than 20,000 acres, 

 several over 200,000 and one man nearly a million 

 and a half, and where 26 peers own a larger 

 tract than the whole of Belgium, with its three- 

 quarters of a million proprietors. 



We may take it then, that the present move- 

 ment in England has only just begun, and will 



65 1 



