Relation of Agricultural Population to Area of Land. 17 
is nothing like this — probably just below half of the cultivated 
area. In Denmark, as many recent reports urge, the tenant 
farmer is conspicuous by his absence, freehold or hereditary 
tenure prevailing on nearly 88 per cent, of the total surface. 
Despite all these contrasts it cannot be said from an exami- 
nation of the latest evidence, that the English tenant or the 
English agricultural labourer shows as a rule any strong 
desire to become an owner. And on this point the pros and 
cons will be found to have been very carefully set forth in 
the new Report of Lord Onslow’s Committee. It is, of course, 
not the place here to discuss the legislative efforts which 
have been suggested to enable the practice of owner farming 
to be very largely tried ; but looking to the position which 
this question occupies, from other than a purely economic 
standpoint, one may wish well to the substantial experiments 
proposed in this direction. 
Again and again in the discussion of this question one 
feels that there are points of the most varied character 
to be raised. At one time the subject is debated from 
the point of view of increasing the aggregate production of 
the soil by the intensive cultivation of minute areas, for the 
working of which relatively large amounts of capital and a 
relatively great expenditure of labour is indispensable. At 
another, it is not the question of additional production, but 
that of finding means for the employment of more persons on 
a given area that is the goal aimed at. What is more or less 
loosely called the agricultural population of a country bears in 
different circumstances very different relations to the area of its 
surface. We may have held up for admiration the condition 
of a country like France, which has a measured surface almost 
exactly four times that of England (taken by herself, without 
including other divisions of the United Kingdom), while the 
agricultural population may be more nearly six times as 
large. On a French surface of 130,000,000 acres we are told 
there resides a “rural” population of some 23,500,000, or 
60 per cent, of the inhabitants of the Republic. Of these 
some three-fourths (17,500,000) are set down as belonging to 
the agricultural class, and that agricultural class includes 
dependents and consists of over 3,500,000 persons working 
on their own account, or employers of labour, and somewhat 
under 3,000,000 more employed as labourers in this industry, 
the balance of less than two-thirds being the families or 
personal servants of the workers. Our English statistics do not 
perhaps lend themselves to an exactly parallel classification. 
We have, it is true, in our last census a so-called rural population 
(very differently defined from that of France, however,) which 
is only 28 per cent, of the total population, and of these the 
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