The Land and the Community. 149 



distress which theuce result to the lower classes from the loss 

 of their masters and protectors ; but never one word is hearrl 

 of that made by the State from the extinction of the former 

 proprietor's family," ^ 



Young, however, disagreed with both Wallace's and 

 Stewart's views on this point ; for though he quite realised 

 that over-division of the land was to be deprecated, he refused 

 to admit that the great capitalist was as much a necessity to 

 agriculture as he might be to manufactures. 



The idea that a landowner with an income of £50,000 

 employed as much rural labour as some five hundred free- 

 holders possessed of £100 a year each, was, he asserted, not 

 borne out by facts. For he contended that while the income 

 of the squire of moderate means was entirely absorbed in the 

 employment of productive labour, that of the great landed 

 capitalist was only partially so. Who, he pertinenth^ de- 

 mands,- if not the Englishman of fortune, consumes French 

 wines, employs the industrious gentry of Newmarket and 

 White's, and hires the services of Italian singers and French 

 dancers'? "In both cases," sums up this writer, "the wealth 

 falls into the pockets of the industrious ; but what a wonderful 

 difiference is there to the public between the ends of such 

 industry ! The one is for ever exerted to the most beneficial 

 purposes; the other to the most pernicious ones." It was, in 

 fact, generally admitted that the country gentry of moderate 

 estates were the main support of every kingdom.^ 



Granted, then, that the great capitalist might possibly be a 

 useless, or even detrimental factor in the ideal landed economy 

 of such theorists as this writer, we find ourselves committed 

 to the principle that estates in land can be too large. The 

 question, therefore, resolves itself into where the line should 

 be drawn. 



It was possible to divide some 00,000,000 acres of British 

 soil into twenty-acre lots, capable of supporting three million 

 families of six individuals each. Even then there was room 



' Inquiry in. the Principles of Political Economy, p. 1'2<!. 

 * Political Essays, etc., sub voc. " Agriculture." 

 3 Id. Ibid. 



