the quantity of provisions sent to market by our small farms? Let the production of the island be compared to that of any ten thousand acres kept in one, two, or three hands in Great Britain, and the advantage of small farms will be obvious. Independently of the two thousand families living in the country, compare the surplus produce sent to market with the surplus produce of any ten thousand acres in one, two, or three hands elsewhere, and see on which side the balance will be found."* Surely the particulars mentioned above must be sufficient to establish the truth of the opinion in support of which they have been cited. If they had been known to Arthur Young, they would have induced that candid writer to lay aside his prejudices and to abandon as untenable the position he had taken up. He could not have denied that, tried by his own test, small farms had come off successful, and that they best answered what he had himself pronounced to be the main purpose of agriculture. By what means they accomplish this end is comparatively unimportant. A tree is judged by its fruits, and the conflicting claims of agricultural theories should be determined by observation of their practical results. Improved machines and processes are not valued for some intrinsic virtue of their own- -for the mere pleasure

* Guernsey and Jersey Magazine, Oct. 1837, p. 258.

found in making use of ingenious contrivances, but solely for their effects. The final object for which they are used in farming is to increase the net produce left unconsumed by the cultivator; but if this object can be attained equally well without their aid, surely nothing remains to be desired. The small farmer, though destitute of some of the appliances of the large capitalist, nevertheless manages to get more from the land, and after reserving sufficient for his own consumption, has a larger residue for sale. He might, perhaps, do better still by imitating some of the methods of the large capitalist; but, even as it is, he does better than the other, and his plan must, on the whole, be preferable. To admit that he has the largest produce to dispose of, and yet to quarrel with him because he has not acquired it secundum artem, or to sneer at small farms, because, forsooth, they might more properly be styled gardens, is a singular preference of the means to the end. Dr. Purgon might with equal reason have blamed le malade imaginaire for persisting in living, when, for his neglect of the rules of medicine, he ought, by rights, to have died.

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CHAPTER II.

SOCIAL EFFECTS OF PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP.

THE preceding chapter was principally intended as a vindication of small leasehold farms, although some of the illustrations contained in it were drawn from peasant properties. It is obvious, however, that the arguments urged in favour of the former, apply with greatly increased force to the latter. A small landowner, whose whole produce belongs to himself, is of course richer than he would be if he had to pay rent. He can more easily bear the expenses of cultivation, of procuring proper implements and manure, of drainage and irrigation, and he can keep more live-stock. A small leaseholder can lay out more money on his land in proportion to its extent than a larger occupier; but a small proprietor can spend more than either. He has, besides, very much stronger motives for effecting improvements. "A small proprietor," says Adam Smith, "who knows every part of his little territory, who views it with all the affection which property, especially small property, naturally inspires, and who, upon that account, takes pleasure not only in

cultivating, but in adorning it, is generally of all improvers the most industrious, the most intelligent, and the most successful." It may be added that he is likewise the most liberal. He need not carefully calculate whether an outlay will be fully repaid to him within a certain number of years; he has only to consider whether the increased value of his land will be equal to the interest of the sum which the improvements will cost; he does not require that the principal should ever be returned; he is satisfied to sink it for ever in his own land, provided that in that safest of all investments, it yield a perpetual annuity equal to what would be its annual increase in another employment. Nay, if he be tolerably frugal,—if he spend on cultivation and in the maintenance of his family no more than the leaseholder of a similar property would appropriate to those purposes, he may even grow rich. Inglis tells us that " many Swiss peasants have amassed large fortunes;" in the village of Bergun, in the Grisons, he heard that there were two persons holding money in the British funds, one, 10007., and the other, somewhat less; and in another village of the same sequestered canton he found two peasants said to be worth each 20,0007. sterling;* and in the Channel Islands, men working in the fields in smock

* Inglis's Switzerland, vol. i. pp. 91, 169.

frocks are frequently pointed out to a stranger as possessors of considerable property. Compare this state of things with England, where Burke's remark, that "a farmer's trade is a very poor trade," still holds good, and where it is still as rare as ever to find an instance of one occupying from 150 to 400 acres, who "after a course of the most unremitting parsimony and labour dies worth more than pays his debts, leaving his posterity to continue in nearly the same equal conflict between industry and want, in which the last predecessor, and a long line of predecessors before him, lived and died."*

Again, the peasant proprietor has the strongest possible incentives to diligence. A man never works so well as when paid by the piece, but even then the more he is paid the better he works. The small leaseholder, not less than the small proprietor, is paid in proportion to his labour; but the latter is paid at a higher rate, for he takes to himself the whole fruit of his labours, while the former must content himself with part. The proprietor too, knows that as long as his labour continues equally productive, his remuneration will remain the same, while that of the tenant, though augmented solely by his own exertions, may be diminished at the expiration of his lease. Besides, many rural operations yield

* Thoughts on Scarcity.