THE ENGLISH AGRICULTURAL LABOURER 567 



But, it may be said, supposing that the government were to 

 make such advances, where is the little farmer's working capital 

 to come from ? Is the government to lend him that also ? This 

 is not my notion. Some of it he must find out of his own means 

 or savings*; the rest he should be able to borrow, not from the 

 government, but from co-operative credit banks, to be established 

 and controlled by the Board of Agriculture, working, perhaps, 

 in conjunction with, or through the existing co-operative banks 

 association. I believe firmly, that under proper and sympathetic 

 management they might prove a very powerful factor in the 

 resurrection of the departed class of British yepmen, and there- 

 fore in keeping population on the land. The splendid work they 

 have done on the Continent is known to all. Why should it not 

 be repeated in England ? 



Still, such banks would need a powerful and authoritative start, 

 and that start, I submit with humility, should be given by the 

 government, acting through the Board of Agriculture. Some 

 money might be wanted at the beginning, possibly half a million ; 

 but if we may judge by the Continental experience, given good 

 direction, there is little fear that one halfpenny of this advance 

 would be lost to the treasury. From these banks deserving men, 

 whom their fellows approve and are responsible for, could borrow 

 on the well-known and tested system, with the result, I am con- 

 vinced, that numbers who now have no means of so doing would 

 be able to establish themselves as small farmers. Not many, it 

 is true, could buy their land ; that, where it was desired, might 

 come later with their success. 



Indeed, although I should like to see the land in more hands 

 than it is at present, I think that in England the small-holder is, 

 on the whole, better off as a tenant than as an owner. In the 

 first case his capital is all available to stock his farm, and though 

 an owner is free from rent, too often, as I have shown in this 

 work, he has to meet a heavier burden in the shape of interest on 

 money borrowed upon the security of his freehold. This subject 

 might be written of at much greater length, but I leave it here. 



Before doing so, however, I wish to make it quite clear that I 

 do not desire that all England should be cut up into these little 



