1907.] Report of Small Holdings Committee. 601 



The considerations on which these conclusions are based are 

 discussed in detail in the Report, which also contains the views 

 •of the Committee on a number of less important points. In- 

 stances are given of successful small holdings and of some 

 failures, and in speaking of the conditions which make for suc- 

 cess, the Committee observe that it by no means follows that 

 those who are asking for small holdings are always men who 

 are capable of doing justice to them ; on the contrary, many of 

 those who make these requests are known to be quite unfit : their 

 judicious elimination would make those whose demands remain 

 ■unsatisfied naturally less. Most of those who have made experi- 

 ments in the sub-division of land for small holdings, and have 

 made public their willingness to let or sell in small plots, have 

 had considerable difficulty in sifting the applications, and have 

 had to refuse a large number of manifestly unfit men, some of 

 whom, having failed in every other walk of life, think that any man 

 may make money out of land. It is against these that special 

 precautions should be taken in any experiments made with 

 public money or the public credit, and the Committee therefore 

 desire specially to lay stress on the necessity for the selection 

 of suitable men as occupiers of small holdings, but they are of 

 ■opinion that these precautions could be effectively taken by 

 Local Authorities, and by the Central Authority acting through 

 local agencies. 



The Committee gave much consideration to the question 

 whether it is preferable that a small holder should be a tenant 

 or should become a freeholder under a system of repayment of 

 the capital value of his holding by instalments spread over a 

 number of years. Upon this point there was much divergence 

 ■of opinion among the witnesses. The Committee, however, 

 conclude that the advantages of ownership have not, as a rule, 

 been sufficiently forcibly put before those who desire to culti- 

 vate land, or the terms have been such that the additional cost 

 of purchase has been more onerous than the small holder 

 thinks he can afford, and that under any system such as that of 

 the Irish Land Purchase Acts, whereby the interest and instal- 

 ments of purchase-money together can be fixed at a sum not 

 greater than would have to be paid in rent, a desire for owner- 

 ship might be developed among the peasantry of England and 



