ENGLISH PEASANT-PROPRIETORS.
THERE is a good deal of waste both of thought and time in the discussion on peasant-proprietorship as at present carried on. Quite a host of writers are heaping up evidence to prove that small properties do not pay anywhere on the Continent ; that sub-division is carried too far ; and that the Continental peasants are consequently far more miserable than English labourers. Another set of writers, of whom Lady Verney is the best known, endeavour to prove that small proprietorship is morally bad, breeding in the small proprietors avarice, callousness, and a contempt for the refinements of civilisation. They starve their cattle, it is said, and overwork their women. The defenders of the system, on the other hand, depict the condition of English labourers in the darkest colours, and declare that the peasantry of the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man are the most con- tented agriculturists in the world. Politicians all over the country take sides in the contention with a sort of ardour, and candidates' political soundness is tested by their opinion on the precise economic results of cultivation in patches, as compared with cultivation in large blocks. It seems to us that amidst all this flow of words the true object of establishing free-trade in land is in danger of being lost sight of. The purpose of that great reform is not to ruin great landlords, or establish little owners, or deforest all parks, or supersede the plough by the spade, or produce any other predetermined result, but to make the transfer of land so easy that it should fall, like any other commodity, to those who can use it best. It is liberty, not a new restriction, which reformers are endeavouring to secure. If labourers cannot cultivate little plots to advantage, they will not try to cultivate them. Nobody, not even Mr. Jesse Collings, who is talked about as if he were a hidden dictator, instead of being, as he is, an enthusiast of small influence, proposes to make them do it ; and they certainly will not do it unless they see advantage in the attempt. A Bishop once thought it possible to punish labourers for joining a strike ; but who is to punish them, should they decline to become petty owners / English agricultural labourers are very ignorant, and rather unenterprising, though they emigrate to the towns with notable readiness, till the population of most rural districts declines year by year ; but they are shrewd domestic economists, know their own pecu- niary interests perfectly well, and are as little likely to purchase or hire land they do not want as any class of the community. They are by no means the simpletons some of their advisers fancy, and instead of swallowing promises readily, have a rooted suspicion of all above them who speak a little too " fairly," which it will take a generation to remove. As to the overwork, and the sordid ways, and the absence of capital which arise from parcelling out the land, what have the politicians to do with any of those things ? If a labourer thinks it worth while to overwork himself in order to be independent, why should he not be as free as the artisan, who, tired of incessant labour, prefers a pound a week from a small shop to two pounds a week from the practice of a handi- craft ? Nobody stops the barrister in practice, or the physician in high request, or the statesman with his duties to perform, from working himself to death. As to the higher morale of the labourer, the vices of the serf are as bad as the vices of the churl; and if they were not, nobody restricts the occupation of any other class in order that its members should remain generous, or well-mannered, or even good. All other men are considered freemen, and let alone ; but the labourers are advised, and scolded, and legislated for as if they were children, and as if they would not learn from experience like everybody else. There are London writers who travel among them and report on them as if they were savages, or as if the opinions of all villagers and villages must be exactly alike. The reformers ask nothing for them except that a commodity which they understand the profitable use of should be bought and sold with as little friction as may be ; and to judge from the protests published, one would think that the scheme of society was about to be violently revolutionised. Because an acre is to be made saleable to Hodge as well as to De Vere, therefore Hodge is to starve, and Hodge's wife is to be a martyr, and Hodge's children are to be ill-fed louts I That is nonsense. It is a little more difficult to establish free-trade in land than to allow free-trade in corn ; but morality is no more threatened by the one reform than by the other, nor will the landowners or the labourers be more ruined than were the protected manufacturers or their " hands."
The doctrinaires on both aides obscure counsel with words in other ways. One set of them seem to hope that all England may at once become, like the little plain outside Dorchester, a huge field covered with morsels of allotments ; while another side declare that in a twelvemonth or two all the little patches cultivated by peasants will have been sold to the rich, who will like to accumulate acres out of which even rent-free labourers who overwork themselves cannot extract a profit. Nobody will admit, what yet is undoubtedly the fact, that England is of all countries in the world the most varied; that there are parts of it which only a landlord could hold, and parts where peasants would be happy ; parts which only the capitalists can make culturable, and parts where the tireless labour of the small proprietor will turn a comparative desert into an ugly but profitable garden. They argue as if large freeholders and little freeholders could not live side by side, or as if every little draper were of necessity a mortal enemy to, say, Marshall and Snellgrove. They reason as if one of the slowest operations in the world, a change in the method of cultivation, could be carried out by decree, or as if the larger proportion of mankind did not prefer the certainty of wages to the chances of independence. Ask any three men in the street whether they prefer a salary of £400 a year paid quarterly, or the chance of making £500, and two of the three will decide instantly for the former alternative ; yet it is asserted, especially by those who declare that land cannot be cultivated in patches, that if labourers can obtain land, all agricultural work for wages will come suddenly to an end. They might as well say that because everybody can open a shop there will be no more shopmen. As a matter of fact, we believe the happiest agriculturist in England is the man who, earning 12s. a week for perhaps three-fourths of his time, has an acre and a halt besides, which he and his wife can cultivate in their leisure ; and why, with land free to buy, should not the majority gravi- tate towards that position ? Oh, because land is saleable now, and they do not gravitate. Well, we should just ask those who make this assertion, and who quote "Lord Cairns's Act " with such tiresome iteration, this one question. Suppose a law were passed making the intervention of a lawyer, and a month's delay, and a preparation of deeds necessary to every sale or purchase of Consols, how much would Consols fall? And if' the services of the lawyer, and the preparation of the deeds, and the worry were equal for the purchase of £100,000 Con- sols and of £50, how many little people would be found to invest in Consols ? And we would ask them further, why, if the easy transfer of land strikes them as expedient—and they all affirm this—it is not expedient to make the transfer as easy as possible ? If land is to be distributed in bits, its transfer must be made not only possible, which we admit it now is under Acts not yet old enough to be really known, but easy and simple,—so easy, that a common man shall not regard the mere operation of purchasing as a diffi- culty; and so simple, that a printed formula a page long shall be all the deed required. It will be difficult to attain these ideals ; but until they are attained the little purchaser will never buy readily, while the great seller will never know what his land is really worth. English landlords just now are sick with fear of American corn, Canadian meat, and English Radicalism ; but how would they feel if they could get the Belgian average,—fifty years' purchase—for any morsel of land they chose to sell ? Liberty will be as good for the great folk as the small, perhaps better ; an& it is liberty which it is proposed to concede to buyers and sellers of English land. That is already concede& as regards every other commodity except alcohol, and no one- complains of the result. We hear endless complaints about free-trade in sugar, its unfairness, and the misery that springs from sugar being so cheap; but that sugar is bought and sold in huge quantities, often by parole, without any document pass- ing at all, of this no man complains ; nor, were sugar to be sold as land is, after solemn formalities, would any seller or consumer fail to see that he had a new grievance. If land is property—as we, for example, strenuously maintain against all varieties of Socialists—it is not on those who would remove restrictions, but on those who would maintain them, that the burden of proof should fall. Who stops the sale of brea& because it is possible for the sickly to eat to indigestion ? Let them eat, and learn by pain that while bread is for the- majority the staff of life, bread does not suit all men.
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