18 The Place of the Small Holder in English Agriculture. 
active agricultural population of the English counties (Wales 
being for the purpose of our present inquiry omitted) does 
not apparently exceed, if it even reaches, a million persons, 
although there is too little precision in the figures for any 
confident use of the total. 
Again, if we attempt to follow the French classification of the 
elements of which the English million of active agriculturists 
is made up, we should find not quite 190,000 record themselves 
as farmers, while the remaining four-fifths are labourers, 
assistants, or other engaged auxiliaries. If a proportion of 
dependent families and servants of the active agricultural 
population were to be allowed and added on the French scale, 
i.e., a little less than two per worker, the estimate — and of 
course it is a very rough one — would give us, including 
dependents, an agricultural population of somewhat less than 
3,000,000 souls in the English counties alone. 
That figure, it may be submitted, is the one to be placed 
against the 17,500,000 of our French neighbours. Now, as the 
ratio of the English area to that of France appears to be as 
one to four, it would follow that, were the two systems of 
agriculture identical, the English agricultural community would 
have to be expanded by nearly 1,400,000 persons beyond the 
total just arrived at. The question, then, to be solved is : How 
far the different density of the two agricultural populations is 
due to the greater multiplication of agricultural holdings in 
France ; how far to the natural conditions which dominate and 
prescribe the most profitable types of agriculture in the two 
countries ; or how far may it be due to the superior efficiency 
of English over French labour in achieving what I still regard 
as a relatively greater productive out-turn by the expenditure 
of a smaller labour force. 
I am not going to inflict on my readers here what would be 
perhaps a tedious, if interesting, analysis of relative production 
and its economic cost. But the latter problem is worth a 
thoughtful and detailed inquiry by some of our younger investi- 
gators, equipped with accurate knowledge of the agricultural 
processes and the agricultural results of the two countries. The 
answer may be very different from that to be given if attention 
were confined to the political aspects of the case. In that 
event the preference may be given to any system, even if 
more costly in its expenditure of human force, on the ground 
of maintaining a larger country-bred and country-reared and 
country-loving population, as a make-weiglit to the less stable 
emotions of a purely urban electorate. 
But France, though the nearest and most familiar object 
lesson in this permanent controversy, is not the only type to 
which the advocates of smaller units of agricultural management 
