86 OUR ENGLISH LAND MUDDLE. 



these : A free conveyance with no restrictions, 

 except that the holding must be used for agri- 

 culture or horticulture during the term of pur- 

 chase ; credit up to £500 at 3 per cent, for 

 erecting homesteads ; no deposit on purchase ; 

 price of the land and any money borrowed for 

 buildings to be repaid by half-yearly instalments 

 spread over thirty-five years, with 3 per cent, 

 per annum interest on unpaid balances ; for 

 each holding, right of common for one horse and 

 one cow over twenty-nine acres of pasture land. 

 For the eighteen small holdings offered under 

 these terms there were five hundred applicants, 

 and the successful men are naturally doing very 

 well. But they are allowed very generous terms. 

 It can readily be seen that these terms are not 

 strictly economic ; but still they do not involve 

 the vendor in actual loss. His generosity is 

 confined to the provision of very cheap credit ; 

 and, dealing with picked men, the risk of giving 

 that credit is slight. I believe that this small 

 ownership offer had its prompting partly in a 

 desire to illustrate how illiberal are the condi- 

 tions of the Government system ; for the pur- 

 chasers from the Duke of Bedford pay actually 



