SMALL HOLDINGS 165 



by legal enactment, without building up any 

 stable society in its place. Our present con- 

 dition is not, as some contend, the product of 

 merely economic forces : it is the product of 

 law, modified by economic forces. The 

 Enclosure Acts ; the law of Entail ; the law 

 of Intestate Succession ; the old Poor Law, 

 assisting the large farmer by grants in aid of 

 wages ; the Corn Laws, encouraging the 

 breaking up of commons ; the Game Laws, 

 promoting sport on a large scale all played 

 their part in the long tragedy of destruction. 

 The central fact in the mind of any Land 

 Reformer must inevitably be that the monopo- 

 lization of our English land was brought 

 about entirely by a long series of legal enact- 

 ments : the central purpose, that wrongs 

 inflicted by law can be, and must be, remedied 

 by law. The advocate of a greater sub- 

 division of our soil for the benefit of a larger 

 number of persons, although he knows the 

 story of the English land and believes that 

 millions of acres have been filched from 

 the poorer folk by violence and chicanery, 

 is yet quite content to pay a fair price 

 for the repurchase of this land for public 

 purposes. 



Few impartial students of rural life have 

 denied the existence of a very real desire to 



