72 OUR ENGLISH LAND MUDDLE. 



Their idea is to make your small-holder a 

 tenant of a public body, saddle him with a 

 good stiff rent, swollen by expenses of ad- 

 ministration, instalments of sinking fund, 

 and so forth ; and then when he has held 

 his farm, let us say forty or fifty years, 

 under those conditions, he finds himself 

 just as far from actual ownership as he was 

 when he started at the beginning of the 

 race. He buys his farm, but he does not 

 buy it for himself. He buys it for his 

 county council, which is a very different 

 thing. 



" To that policy we desire to oppose the 

 policy of actual and complete ownership. 

 We believe that ownership is better for the 

 man ; that nothing will make him so in- 

 dependent, so self-reliant, will give him such 

 an interest in his farm, and such a sense 

 of citizenship, as complete ownership of a 

 few acres of land. We believe ownership 

 is best for the whole community, because it 

 will place the social structure on a firmer 

 and more solid basis ; and we believe, 

 lastly, that it is good for the land itself, 



