Large and Small Holdings. 
27 
'is composed of honourable practical men of different stations 
and different politics, all deeply interested in land, who gra- 
tuitously devote a great deal of valuable time to the management 
•of the Company, and who are only prevented from making the 
venture a commercial success from want of funds. If it had not 
been for the princely liberality of one of the directors giving 
a good-sized farm to the Company to be " butchered and cut 
up," this interesting experiment could not have been started 
lor want of funds. It is surely well to try what private enter- 
prise and individual exertion can do, before compelling local 
authorities to undertake duties which have been badly per- 
formed by such bodies. If small farms can be made to pay, 
'there is no need — save in facilitating the transfer of land — for 
legislation ; for speculators will ahvavs crop up, and there will 
be plenty of owners only too ready to sell land. If such holdings 
will not answer, then it is unwise to make the ratepayers play 
such a losing game. The Royal Commission on Agriculture 
reported against " artificially stimulating a system ill adapted 
to the habits of the people, or the condition of agriculture in 
England ; " a conclusion which any one practically acquainted 
with English farming and rural life will readily endorse. 
Conclusion. 
I am painfully conscious that instead of making a contrast 
between large and small farms, I have written a confused J«»<Wg. 
Had the comparison been made fifteen years ago, when all 
things went well with farming, there could have been no diffi- 
culty in pointing to the superior products and profits of large 
lioldings. During the past decade, the tide of prosperity has 
turned dead against extensive corn growing. Now the produce 
of grass-land suffers almost as severely, and the small occupier 
has, during the past two years, for the first time felt the pressure of 
really bad times. Whether he will be able to stand that pressure 
■ as well and as long as the larger tenants have fought against theiF 
losses, time alone will prove. The arable farmer has had painful 
experience of the truth of Sir John Lawes's matured opinion, 
" that high farming is no remedy for low prices." The small 
farmer is seldom a high farmer, and it is hardly possible for 
his frugality and economy to be much further extended. The 
stiff rent he has hitherto paid can no longer be expected of 
him ; but at present there is no great difficulty in letting small 
farms, which can be carried on in conjunction with some other 
calling, and therefore all the necessary relief can be hardly ex- 
pected from the landowner. The idea that the English farmer 
must conform still more closely to the model of the Continental 
