SMALL HOLDINGS 183 



guardians of the rights of property and keen 

 advocates of protective legislation. The 

 Conservatives have ample justification for 

 their belief. We all realize the immense 

 influence exercised by the agrarian policy of 

 Germany's freeholders. A telegram from 

 Russia appears in the Times " Everywhere 

 the peasants readily avail themselves of the 

 facilities for becoming freeholders. M. 

 Stolypin hopes thus to secure an army of 

 yeomen who shall form the main guard of a 

 constitutional realm." On the other hand, 

 some, at least, of those who warmly advocate 

 tenancy as the preferable solution are no 

 doubt led to that conclusion, in some measure, 

 by their social and political sympathies. In 

 the eyes of these reformers the day of indi- 

 vidualism is past, and the future welfare of 

 the commonwealth lies in the beneficent 

 application of State collectivism : amid the 

 political atmosphere of Old-Age Pensions, 

 Free Education, National Insurance and the 

 like, it would be a sheer anachronism to allow 

 the evil influence of private ownership to be 

 extended more widely than ever over the land 

 of England. 



Outside the area of a priori sympathies and 

 political partizanship a case can well be made 

 out by each set of reformers. The " owner- 



