240 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



In all land policy it is difficult to reconcile, especially among a 

 proletariat ignorant alike of economics and business, the social and 

 political aspect of thei problem with sound economics, and the former 

 being generally more popular and lending itself to makeshift opportunism 

 is apt to dominate the counsels of Government, to the exclusion of those 

 which may appear hard and unsympathetic, but which are often 

 fraught with a wider and more continuous prosperity to the gi-eat masses 

 of the population. Thus it was that the enclosure of the commons, 

 which multiplied exceedingly the output of agricultural wealth, was 

 strenuously resisted in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and 

 only gained its great impetus and development in the latter half of the 

 eighteenth century, when its undoubted advantages had become realised 

 by many of those who most sympathetically championed the interests 

 of the poor. Thus it is to-day with the artificial extension, under strong 

 Government pressure, of statutory small holdings beyond the area of 

 their possible absorption by experienced cultivators of sufficient capital, 

 in thei absence of effective co-operation and during a period of falling 

 markets. But social and political prejudices, even when directed 

 against a class which on balance is an asset to the State, must be 

 taken into' account in the balancing of economic advantage, and even 

 more so now than in those expansive days when George III. was king, 

 when agricultural landowners were the predominant political force, and 

 when Arthur Young preached his illuminating economic gospel, which, 

 in the practice of his disciples and with the assistance' of scientific 

 discovery, carried the agriculture of Britain tO' its pre-eminent position 

 amongst the nations of the world. 



It is often said of social revolutions, as it is being said of the post- 

 War Russian Revolution, that the cause is to be found in the monopoly 

 of land in the hands of a few great landowners. It is at least open 

 to' doubt whether this has ever been the main cause of any revolution, 

 and certainly was not so in the case of that which has been recently 

 prevalent in Russia. In 1917, and for many decades previously, the 

 great Russian landowners only owned one-tenth of the land ol Russia, 

 the other nine-tenths belonging to the peasants, or rather to their com- 

 munities. This land was managed by the Communal Council, or ' Mir,' 

 which periodically met to allot landi for cultivation to members of the 

 commune, who, as a result, occupied individual holdings, enjoying 

 their use until another re-allotment took place. It is noteworthy, 

 however, that the one-tenth of the nation's land under the control of 

 the large individual landowners was that upon which the most care 

 was bestowed and the most up-to-date methods were employed, with the 

 result that the output of food from this one-tenth exceeded the total 

 output of the other nine-tenths, which were under the control of the 

 peasant communes, and which were badly cultivated and managed. 

 It was when the Revolution drove out Russian landowners that the 

 production of food decreased so seriously as to threaten the nation 

 with the ho'rrors of starvation. 



Whereas a relative paucity of landed proprietors in a populous and 

 preponderantly urban country engenders political a.ntipathy and an 

 unsympathetic Government attitude, a multiplication oi small owners 



