128 Large and Small Holdings 



practicable, it can require the County Council to produce a detailed 

 scheme for the purpose. If the Council fails to fulfil this duty, the 

 Board itself may prepare such a scheme, obtaining the necessary 

 information by means of a public enquiry, as it can always do in the 

 case of a difference of opinion between itself and a County Council. 

 The scheme must then be carried out, according to the Acts of 1892 

 and 1907, by the County Council. If the Council again refuses to do 

 its duty, the Commissioners may take over the work, and in that 

 case all rights given by the Acts to the County Council pass to the 

 Commissioners, but the County Council or other local authority 

 concerned is responsible for the expenditure incurred. 



It is evident that these provisions put upon the County Council 

 the pressure which has so far been wanting. That the smaller local 

 authorities, which hitherto have had to proceed through the County 

 Council, can now appeal direct to the central authority (see Part III, 

 26 (7) of the Act of 1907), which is to be carefully and constantly 

 observant of the whole question, is in itself a great step in advance : 

 and the fact that in case of need the Commissioners can take action 

 at last provides a guarantee that any really well-founded demand for 

 small holdings will be satisfied. 



Nevertheless it would be a mistake to ascribe the miscarriage of 

 the Act of 1892 solely to the failure of County Councils to carry it 

 into effect. In spite of the anxiety of the Departmental Committee 

 to put that cause in the forefront, it could not be concealed, in view 

 both of the evidence of experts and the facts they brought forward, 

 that the whole machinery of the Act was defective, and in parts 

 faulty, and that some of its most essential features needed radical 

 reform. 



This was especially the case with the provisions respecting the 

 acquisition of land. Even where a Council did not lack the goodwill 

 and the energy necessary to carry out the Act, it was powerless to 

 proceed if there were no land suitable for division at its disposal. 

 "Large farms, it is true, come into the market from time to time," 

 wrote a man of experience, Mr C. R. Buxton, in a memorandum which 

 is well worth reading 1 , "but small quantities of land are often quite 

 impossible to obtain." The conditions noted above as enhancing the 

 value of land in England increase the difficulty in this case also; it is 

 indeed partly created by the long-established customs and traditions 

 of English landownership. The exchange value of a large estate is, 

 for social and political reasons, higher than the price which small 



1 Small Holdings Report, 1906, Minutes , p. 431. 



