“L’Amor che muove il Sole, e l’altre stelle.”
[[217]]
NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.
I have had by me for some time a small pamphlet, “The Agricultural Labourer, by a Farmer’s Son,”[10] kindly sent me by the author. The matter of it is excellent as far as it reaches; but the writer speaks as if the existing arrangements between landlord, farmer, and labourer must last for ever. If he will look at the article on “Peasant Farming” in the ‘Spectator’ of July 4th of this year, he may see grounds for a better hope. That article is a review of Mr. W. T. Thornton’s “Plea for Peasant Proprietors;” and the following paragraph from it may interest, and perhaps surprise, other readers besides my correspondent. Its first sentence considerably surprises me to begin with; so I have italicized it:—
“This country is only just beginning to be seriously roused to the fact that it has an agricultural question at all; and some of those most directly interested therein are, in their pain and surprise at the discovery, hurrying so fast the wrong way, that it will probably take a long time to bring them round again to sensible thoughts, after most of the rest of the community are ready with an answer.
“The primary object of this book is to combat the pernicious error of a large school of English economists with reference to the hurtful character of small farms and small landed properties.… One would think that the evidence daily before a rural economist, in the marvellous extra production of a market garden, or even a peasant’s allotment, over an ordinary farm, might suffice to raise doubts whether [[218]]vast fields tilled by steam, weeded by patent grubbers, and left otherwise to produce in rather a happy-go-lucky fashion, were likely to be the most advanced and profitable of all cultivated lands. On this single point of production, Mr. Thornton conclusively proves the small farmer to have the advantage.
“The extreme yields of the very highest English farming are even exceeded in Guernsey, and in that respect the evidence of the greater productiveness of small farming over large is overwhelming. The Channel Islands not only feed their own population, but are large exporters of provisions as well.
“Small farms being thus found to be more advantageous, it is but an easy step to peasant proprietors.”
Stop a moment, Mr. Spectator. The step is easy, indeed;—so is a step into a well, or out of a window. There is no question whatever, in any country, or at any time, respecting the expediency of small farming; but whether the small farmer should be the proprietor of his land, is a very awkward question indeed in some countries. Are you aware, Mr. Spectator, that your ‘easy step,’ taken in two lines and a breath, means what I, with all my Utopian zeal, have been fourteen years writing on Political Economy, without venturing to hint at, except under my breath;—some considerable modification, namely, in the position of the existing British landlord?—nothing less, indeed, if your ‘step’ were to be completely taken, than the reduction of him to a ‘small peasant proprietor’? And unless he can show some reason against it, the ‘easy step’ will most assuredly be taken with him.
Yet I have assumed, in this Fors, that it is not to be taken. That under certain modifications of his system of Rent, he may still remain lord of his land,—may, and ought, provided always he knows what it is to be lord of anything. Of which I hope to reason farther in the Fors for November of this year. [[219]]