15 
Proportion of Land owned by Occupiers. 
far he should be helped to do so by outside aid have been once 
again discussed. Here we come, as all committees who examine 
the matter come, into a very debatable region. It is not enough 
to quote purely a priori opinions as to the magic of property 
— not enough to recognise, as many practical agriculturists 
will, the real political advantage to their great industry of 
multiplying the number of persons who have a permanent 
interest in the land. Neither will quotations from the experi- 
ence of other States help us very materially in this matter, 
although it is of interest to read how in Germany, or France, 
or Denmark, an opposite system to our own holds good. 
Considerations of quite a different order have to be regarded 
before any conclusion is reached, and history, experience, 
economic teaching, and political motives will all in succession 
be appealed to. 
Still, we have one advantage now not obtainable in the older 
discussions. When I wrote on this question twenty years ago, 
we did not know — at least with any statistical precision— what 
proportion of our farmed land here was occupied by its owners 
and what by tenants. That information is happily now forth- 
coming, and although it applies still to the limited area known 
as technically cultivated, it coincides with that of the holdings 
return, and gives us certain results to begin with. 
Taking the English figures alone, as before, the general 
report of the Board of Agriculture for 1905 gives the land 
owned by its occupiers as just 13 per cent, of the *whole. 
Wide variation in practice appears in this matter between 
county and county. The highest proportion of land occupied 
by its owners at the present time appears to occur in Surrey, 
where more than one acre in three is so returned, a feature 
which is no doubt connected with the large use of land in this 
county for residential, rather than purely agricultural purposes. 
In the same way, in Berkshire, Hampshire, Middlesex, and 
Sussex, high percentages of owner farming, ranging from 
23‘8 to 27'6 per cent, are reported. At the other end of the 
scale will be found the counties of Cheshire, with less than 
7 per cent, so occupied, and Lancashire with little more ; while 
in Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Durham, and Northumberland, the 
proportion of the land in the owners’ hands is not up to 
9 per cent. Even in Lincoln, in portions of which county 
colonies of peasant owners have always been noted, not 
10 per cent, of the cultivated land returned in the yearly 
schedules is now described as owned by the occupiers — a far 
lower ratio than prevailed in 1888. Taking a broader view, 
the south-eastern and east-midland counties of England have 
over 19 per cent, of cultivated land in this category, and the 
proportion was even higher than this, or 22 per cent., when 
