Allotmenfs and Small Holdings. 
io7 
difference in the mutual relations of soil and climate in Great 
Britain and in the small holding districts of Belgium ; and 
this difference would be very materially to the disadvantage 
of Great Britain in competition, not only with Belgium, but 
with other countries, in the production of some of the smaller 
articles of high value which have been referred to. 
In illustration of some of the characteristics of the farming 
of small holdings under suitable conditions, some facts may be 
given from a Eeport published in this Journal '■ of a journey 
undertaken at the request of the Council of the Society, by the 
late Dr. Voelcker and Mr. Jenkins, the late secretary, to study 
the agriculture of Belgium. In ihe course of their description 
of a successful farm of ten acres, su] porting three or four persons, 
they quote from the accounts of ore year, which showed that 
besides wheat, dairy and garden pioduce, &c., an acre of colza 
sold for 211. 10s., a tenth of an acre of flax for 5Z. (equal to 50/. 
per acre), and a quarter of an acre of tobacco for 16/. (equal 
to 64/. per acre). It will be observed that two out of the three 
of these are industrial crops, upon which much labour is 
expended after they are removed from the land. 
Then, as examples of small holdings in France, Consul 
Pauncefote, referring to the district of Nantes, says that the 
position of peasant pi-oprietors is a miserable one, and that the 
system of peasant proprietorship is not a good one for getting 
the value out of the land, and, except under special circum- 
stances, is a very bad one for the proprietor himself from the 
point of view of worldly prosperity. He says : 
“ This class never did and never can live hy farming as we understand it 
in England, and the mistake of supposing that they were doing so has arisen 
from the circumstance that a large population certainly was supported for 
many years on small patches of land ; hut they were manufacturers of wine 
and brandy, not farmers. A man saved up money and bought a piece of 
ground planted with vines, and employed his labour and that of his family 
in the threefold occupation of caring for them, making wine, and distilling 
brandy ; and it was the profit from these three operations, two of which are 
industrial, not agricultural, which enabled him to make a living. The vines 
have failed, and the towns are filled with those peasant proprietors looking 
for work, who, instead of having been kept in the country by making them 
owners, have been ruined by it, and prefer anything else to going back to it. 
And not only have these people been ruined themselves, but as most of them 
became owners through the facilities ofiered by some of the great financial 
societies in Paris, these establishments have suflfered great losses.” 
Again, the British Consul-General at Havre, in his last 
report, says : 
“The farms are what would be called in England quite small, and the 
tenants or owners, as the case may be, woi k excessivelj' hard on them. I think 
‘ Vol. vr. (1870), pp. 1-86. 
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