422 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL 



Land and English Landlords. It occurred on the 

 Annandale Estate in Dumfriesshire, where farm labourers 

 were given leases for twenty-five years, at ordinary farm 

 rents, of from two to six acres of land each, on which they 

 built their own cottages with stone and timber supplied 

 by the landlord. 



' ' All the work on these little farms was done at by hours, and by 

 members of the family; the cottager buying roots of the farmer, and 

 producing milk, butter, and pork, besides rearing calves. Among 

 such peasant farmers pauperism soon ceased to exist, and many of 

 them became comparatively well off. It was particularly observed 

 that habits of marketing and the constant demands on thrift and 

 forethought, brought out new virtues and powers in the wives. In 

 fact, the moral effects of the system, in fostering industry, sobriety, 

 and contentment, were described as no less satisfactory than its 

 economical success." 



These moral effects of the secure tenure of land in 

 small farms or cottage homesteads have been observed by 

 politicians, travellers, and moralists wherever the system 

 prevails. Thus, William Howitt, in his Rural and 

 Domestic Life of Germany, says : 



" The German peasants work hard, but they have no actual want. 

 Every man has his house, his orchard, his roadside-trees, commonly 

 so heavy with fruit that he is obliged to prop and secure them or 

 they would be torn to pieces. He has his corn plot, his plots for 

 mangold-wurzel, for hemp, and so forth. He is his own master, and 

 he and every member of his family have the strongest motives to 

 labour. You see the effects of this in that unremitting diligence 

 which is beyond that of the whole world besides, and his economy, 

 which is still greater. . . . The German bauer looks on the country 

 as made for him and his fellow-men. He feels himself a man ; he 

 has a stake in the country as good as that of the bulk of his neigh- 

 bours ; no man can threaten him with ejection or the workhouse so 

 long as he is active and economical. He walks, therefore, with a bold 

 step ; he looks you in the face with the air of a free man, but a 

 respectful ahV 5 



That admirable historian and novelist, Mr. Baring 

 Gould, confirms this. Writing at a much later period, he 

 says in his Germany Past and Present : 



"The artisan is restless and dissatisfied. He is mechanized. He 

 finds no interest in his work, and his soul frets at the routine. He 

 is miserable and he knows not why. But the man who toils on his 



