98 OUR ENGLISH LAND MUDDLE. 



to the farm, not to the individual. There 

 is no sense in wasting good money and good 

 land on settlers who will almost certainly 

 fail. Nor is it sensible to endow a settler 

 to enable him to take up a farm, and 

 then to allow him to sell out {vide the Irish 

 system). 



5. A general expropriation of English 

 landlords in order to cut up their properties 

 for closer settlement would be a serious mis- 

 take, and would reduce for a long time our 

 agricultural output without adding to the 

 happiness of the man on the land. A small 

 holdings system should be grafted on to the 

 existing system, not substituted for it. Eng- 

 lish landlordism — thanks to surviving good 

 traditions of feudalism — has still some years 

 of national usefulness, and should not be 

 sacrificed. 

 It has been difficult to express a view on this 

 matter of small holdings without touching upon 

 other issues of the land question, such as agri- 

 cultural education, the benefits and evils of 

 landlordism per se, and the help which cheap 

 credit can give in bringing the land and the 



