in progress, higher class of stock is being introduced, subletting and subdivision have diminished, the "Gombeen man" has disappeared, and, best of all, the periodical instalments of rent are being punctually paid.

One woman, who had purchased her holding, thus epigrammatically summed up the situation,-"Abundance is often a misfortune; I am poor, but may be happier than many a millionaire. Every calf to the rearing."

Let us now turn to France, where the system has had a fair trial over a long series of years. The libels of Zola exercise a certain effect on people's minds, though few of us have had the courage to wade through the thick accumulations of filth which envelop the prosy pages of 'La Terre.'

Lady Verney, too, although much more sympathetic, seems to have exaggerated the Spartan frugality of the lives led by the small agriculturists across the Channel, in the interests of those painfully accumulated savings which one day dower a daughter, and next help to defray the obligations of the state. What we know practically about them is that they flood our markets with excellent eggs and butter and vegetables, which we ought to produce at home, and that they must, therefore, be industrious well as capable; and I will now call on my friend Mr Yoxall, M.P., to tell us something about them, derived from "repeated visits in three-fourths

as

of the area of France, and from conversations with all and sundry," and his conclusions are as follows:

"I do not believe that the landowning peasants of France are as a class doing less well than formerly, or getting into the hands of money-lenders, or that their standard of cultivation has been lowered.

"What is no doubt true is that those of them whose livelihood depends upon vine-culture, in Touraine, the Bordelais, and in the region of Beziers, as well as to a less extent in Burgundy, have for half a generation had to fight with phylloxera, and to incur comparatively large outlay in replacing their vines. This loss will, no doubt, in a fair number of cases, have meant a recourse to borrowed capital; but this is, if true of the peasants who cultivate the vine, far more true of the large vineyard owners. Again, during the period 1899-1902, though the grape crop was abundant in quantity, the quality of the wine was inferior, which of course means a reduced price at the sale of the grapes. During the last two or three years diseases, apparently new to France, which they call black-rot and mildew, have assailed this particular kind of crop, and there is no doubt that last summer the pleasure-resorts in the South of France were much less frequented than usual because of hard times' thus brought about.

"But when one comes to the other crops, the above remarks do not, so far as I know, at all apply, and the French peasant

is quite as keen after a bit of land, and then another bit of land, as ever he was. For example, in August last I dropped off the train at Brive to lunch in the hotel which figures in my 'Alain Tanger's Wife.' I found my friend the garçon, who figures there also, had left, and inquiring after him, I went to his cottage just outside the town, which is situated almost in the centre of France. He was forty-five years old, had retired, and was living upon the interest of his savings-bank deposits, plus the results of the culture of two bits of land-one, about twofifths of a rood, which he had bought for £117 twelve years ago, and one a little smaller, for which he had given £90. He has a wife and one child.

"There can be no doubt that of late years a certain growth of large farms and estates has taken place in France, particularly in the districts which supply Paris and the other cities. That is to say, the man who inherits a piece of land, works it well, saves money, buys more land, and gradually comes to cultivate it by machinery, and to adopt, so far as he can, large farming methods. But this aggregation of plots of land is, of course, rectified in the next generation by the operation of the law which compels the division of estates at demise. There are thus two tendencies going on side by side, the one to aggregation, which in itself seems to me to be a proof that la petite culture enables investments, and the other of disin

tegration again, brought about by the Loi Napoléon. Probably these two do not yet balance each other, and the second is the more powerful so far.

"Upon the whole, therefore, my opinion, so far as it is worth anything (and I know three-fourths of the area of France pretty well from repeated visits and from conversations with all and sundry), is that apprehensions as to the regrouping of French land, and the growth of big farms, to begin with, may be set aside as applying to one generation only, and that the French peasants, taken as a class, are flourishing more than ever they did before. It should be observed, however, that their power of saving money rests very largely upon a sparing and little rising standard of life and comfort, as well as upon an economy in fuel, dress, and outward show, and a knowledge of how to make the most of every scrap of food, which we in this country might emulate more without loss to real dignity and convenience."

Take it all over, then, the case for peasant proprietorship is pretty complete in Ireland, where the landlords, as a rule, have traditionally done nothing but draw their rents, where all the improvements have been done by the tenants, and where the situation has been aggravated by the operation of the Land Act, which has levelled all the squires down to the same dull drab plane, and practically prevented those of them who previously managed their estates on the English

principle from sinking any more of their money on the soil, Under these circumstances the tenant who is already a dual owner may just as well acquire the other half on easy terms, and we may trust that his land-hunger will be relieved and his constitution strengthened without future digestive derangement.

And in France too there are exceptional conditions at work, which prevent our making it a standard of comparison with ourselves. There the vine is a leading subject of cultivation, and the climate, and perhaps the soil, encourage la petite culture, which is so profitable abroad, and the French peasant practises minute economies, unknown to us over here, and submits to a standard of living which would suit neither John Bull nor the "unspeakable Scot," who tills his broad acres over the border.

Ireland is indeed a favoured nation, and what would our agricultural tenants think if Parliament, after they had got their rents reduced all over by some 30 or 40 per cent, were to pass an Act providing that by the payment for a limited number of years of a limited sum, they would become the owners of their farms. For this is what the Land Act of 1903 does to the inhabitants of the distressful country, who are never tired of mourning over their woes, and dwelling with monotonous iteration on the grievances of the past. Verily they have had their reward, and the peaceable farmers of the North, who have

toiled hard and patiently to overcome the difficulties of an uncertain climate and an ungrateful soil, view with longing eyes and watery mouths the good things so copiously lavished on their neighbours.

Perhaps some day, when if Ireland is satisfied with what she has got, and ceases her worrying demands on the Imperial Exchequer, the attention of Government may be turned nearer home, and something may be done to meet the just demands of those who ought to be helped, because, even in the worst of times, they have always struggled to help themselves. We want improvements in our system of landtransfer and tenure; loans should be made on easy terms to landlord and tenant alike by which to improve and go with the times; the wretched pittance now dealt out by the Congested District Board of the Highlands should be largely increased, and other reforms helped by State aid, which space forbids us to enter upon here at this time.

Is there any real demand for land purchase on this side of the Irish Channel? The Duke of Fife has sold largely, and those who have bought are doing well; but they had acquired large farms, which are now small estates, and they are "bonnet lairds rather than peasant proprietors,-and other landlords who have tried to follow his Grace's example have failed to obtain any bids for what they tried to sell. For my own part, if I were a tenant, I should agree

with one of the witnesses before the Royal Commission, who said he did not wish to buy his farm, for he much preferred to have the use of the landlord's capital on easy terms, and that brings me to the obvious drawback of the application of the Irish principle to the British Isles. That is the condition in which the small occupying owner must find himself when hard times come over him. He begins his career with high hopes, and the proud consciousness that he is now a laird or a squire. He has presumably a little money to start with, and some friends at his back to give him a shove. At first all goes well. The seasons are favourable, his crops are good, and the special form of culture, petite or grande, in which he is engaged happens to be booming for the moment. But then, perhaps, a change comes over the spirit of his dreams. The weather is against him, his hay is spoilt, his potatoes go wrong, finger-and-toe begins to appear, the strawberries, on which he partly relied, flood the market, and are hardly worth picking, and the ascending series of misfortunes so graphically described in "Auld Robin Gray" envelop him in their meshes; and when the time comes to renew his buildings, or put up more, when it is necessary to have a bit of capital to steady the fluctuations of agricultural prices, or to tide over sickness, or replenish his stock, he will perhaps find to his dismay that his fair weather friends are holding up their umbrellas too, and that he has no official

Jupiter to whom he can look for help when his cart-wheel gets stuck in the mire.

The weak point of occupying ownership is, that it divorces the landlord's capital from the soil, and flings the small and slenderly endowed man absolutely on his own resources to meet the stress of the times. And another objection to the system of purchase, with the aid of a liberal subvention from the Treasury, is, that the sitting tenant, who has no special claim, is made a handsome present by the State, and that others equally worthy of recognition are left out in the cold. This argument of course does not apply to Ireland, where the improvements are made by the farmer and belong in equity to him; but when land is worked on the English system everything is done by the landlord, and the conditions of sale would be much complicated, and if the man who happened to be in possession by lease or otherwise when a Land Act was passed were to be crystallised in perpetuity on the soil, that would be an undoubted grievance to others who were shut out of the power of competing for the plums of ownership, and could only get into the sacred circle by the expenditure of a sum of money worked up to a fictitious point of value by the keen appetite of land-hunger, and which would seriously cripple the resources at his command for stocking and working his farm. On carefully viewing the question from all points of view, I have come to the deliberate conclusion that

the best thing for the community and the individual alike is a carefully graded series of farms, big and small, with well-to-do resident landlords, benevolently superintending their tenants, and spending their money freely among them. We want, of course, to get all we can out of the land without scourging or exhausting it; but an object of hardly less importance is to keep the people there, and thus raise up and maintain a healthy and happy farming and labouring class, who will fight our battles, if need be, and cultivate the arts of peace as well as of war. And this can only be done effectually by discouraging in every way the absorption of small holdings by large, and by giving the agricultural labourer some substantial inducement which will teach him to regard his occupation as a career. I often used to tell my late friend DrSmiles that he was responsible for much of the laudable ambition which keeps young fellows restless in rural occupations, and makes them keen to emulate the careers of the numerous successful men whose rise from poverty to wealth is so graphically described in 'Self-Help'; and then comes the modern system of refined and specialised education, which tends to breed dissatisfaction with the daily toil, the common round, and the dull and often depressing routine of farm-work. We can hardly imagine a less exhilarating occupation than to struggle into a wet morning before daybreak, to feed cattle or to pull turnips or to "plouter about" in thick mud or slush,

to carry on the varied details of duty which constitute the programme of the agriculturist; and no wonder that wistful eyes are sometimes directed towards the brightness and bustle of the town, with its brilliant lightenings and attractive shops and theatres and music-halls, and opportunities of improvement as well as of mere amusement. But, on the other hand, the sun sometimes shines even in Scotland, and the birds sing and the trees are bursting into leaf, and there is a general sense of wellbeing and joie de vivre about us, the pure keen air nips the nose and ears, or the bland and genial breezes of the summer day lap the senses into dreamy forgetfulness of toil and troubles. And the lot of the country worker has many compensations. In my country, at least, he is well paid, as well fed as his master, and, thanks to the exertions of county councillors and sanitary inspectors, his housing is becoming decent and his standard of comfort raised all round; and if there were only enough small holdings to enable him to aspire to becoming a farmer on a moderate scale when he has saved enough money to make a start, that we believe to be the true remedy for the drifting of our rural population away from their country homes. best tenants began life as agricultural labourers, and they are successful because they have been brought up to their business, know it, work at it industriously with frugality and sobriety, and personally so as

Some of my