6 
Large and Small Holdings, 
thing but the most scanty subsistence, and in some districts 
even that is impossible in years like the present. This fact, 
however, furnishes no justification for the statement, which is 
commonly accepted in towns, that the land system of England,, 
with its large farms, has broken down ; that there is no longer 
room for the three classes of landlord, tenant, and labourer, and 
that to save agriculture, we must have small holdings and 
peasant owners. Where similar crops are grown, the small 
farmer has suffered even more than the large tenant. No one 
suggests that to cure the stagnation of trade we must break up 
our large manufactories and return to the hand-loom ; but such 
a suggestion would be as reasonable as the compulsory creation 
of small holdings as a remedy for agricultural distress. It was 
gravely asserted at a recent public meeting that it is possible to 
grow wheat cheaper by the spade than by the plough, although 
digging an acre of land a fair depth costs quite 4Z. an acre. 
There can be no doubt that grain, meat, and wool can be 
produced more cheaply upon large farms, and that it is only in 
some dairy produce, in pork, poultry, eggs, vegetables, «&c., that 
the peasant farmer can successfully compete in England with 
the occupier of large holdings. 
In the arable counties, where most of the large farms are 
found, wretched corn-crops and the low prices of grain for the 
last twelve years have so gradually lessened the farmer's capital,^ 
that his land has not been properly tilled or manured. Where 
the large farmer grew good roots, the high price of store 
cattle frequently prevented him from realizing those profits 
which the good demand for meat should have brought. Those 
farmers who could breed their own stock of cattle and sheep — 
but in purely arable counties this is an impossibility — have 
fared better until the past two years. But now well-b%ed Irish 
cattle can be bought much cheaper than any English farmer can 
rear them, and lambs have been so low in price during the past 
two summers that they have hardly paid the flock-master the 
heavy expenses to which he has been put to furnish suitable 
food in such fitful seasons. 
Small Faems. 
It is the commonly received opinion that small farmers in 
these adverse times have held their ground better than their 
larger and richer brethren. Upon the whole this appears 
to be correct in many localities. An intelligent writer in the 
January ' Edinburgh Review ' says : — 
" A small farmer content with small profits, depending upon the proceeds, 
of garden and dairy produce, and commanding the labour of his family, may 
make both ends meet, where a larger canitalist becomes insolvent." 
