DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.22140#0282
266 INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL HISTORY.
rich. But if the land of the small owners, when bought, goes
into a settlement, the gradual extinction is explained. The
reasoning invariably compares land as an investment, and land
as an instrument, two widely different things ; and as regards the
low rate of interest on land, that I have already disposed of. For
the rest, at the present time, very many people find that land is
anything but a luxury.
In some of these countries which have been referred to, what
is called peasant proprietorship is in reality market gardening.
This is particularly the case in the Channel and the Stilly Islands,
where the mildness of the climate brings the produce into an
early market, where it can be disposed of at high prices. To
some extent this is the case in Belgium, to a larger in parts of
France. But this is not peasant agriculture in our sense of the
word. But I think that, on the whole, Mr. Mill has not exagge-
rated the moral education of peasant agriculture, especially when
it has the constant experience of larger holdings, and the way in
which they are cultivated, though I think he has set too much
store on the Malthusian checks which he has detected in them.
In recent times considerable interest, a little action, and not a
little unreasonable, perhaps interested, ridicule has been expended
on agricultural labourers' allotments. A couple of generations
ago, allotments formed part of the regular system of Poor Law
relief and management, and just as with the Irish conacre, these
allotments were given in lieu of wages, were a kind of agricultural
truck system. After the old Poor Law was modified, every part of
the older system was attacked almost with ferocity, and the new
system was administered with almost brutal severity. Perhaps
there has been no lesson which Guardians and the Central Board
in London were so slow to learn, as that it was possible to carry
out the law with humanity, in deserving cases even with generosity,
and even to effect a reduction in the cost of parochial main-
tenance. The allotments soon went. The philosophers de-
nounced them, sometimes because they were cultivated with the
spade, and the farmers were glad to get rid of what they thought
was apt to make the poor too independent. Recently the practice
has been revived on entirely practical, and by no means on
sentimental grounds, bv such highly-intelligent and well-informed
rich. But if the land of the small owners, when bought, goes
into a settlement, the gradual extinction is explained. The
reasoning invariably compares land as an investment, and land
as an instrument, two widely different things ; and as regards the
low rate of interest on land, that I have already disposed of. For
the rest, at the present time, very many people find that land is
anything but a luxury.
In some of these countries which have been referred to, what
is called peasant proprietorship is in reality market gardening.
This is particularly the case in the Channel and the Stilly Islands,
where the mildness of the climate brings the produce into an
early market, where it can be disposed of at high prices. To
some extent this is the case in Belgium, to a larger in parts of
France. But this is not peasant agriculture in our sense of the
word. But I think that, on the whole, Mr. Mill has not exagge-
rated the moral education of peasant agriculture, especially when
it has the constant experience of larger holdings, and the way in
which they are cultivated, though I think he has set too much
store on the Malthusian checks which he has detected in them.
In recent times considerable interest, a little action, and not a
little unreasonable, perhaps interested, ridicule has been expended
on agricultural labourers' allotments. A couple of generations
ago, allotments formed part of the regular system of Poor Law
relief and management, and just as with the Irish conacre, these
allotments were given in lieu of wages, were a kind of agricultural
truck system. After the old Poor Law was modified, every part of
the older system was attacked almost with ferocity, and the new
system was administered with almost brutal severity. Perhaps
there has been no lesson which Guardians and the Central Board
in London were so slow to learn, as that it was possible to carry
out the law with humanity, in deserving cases even with generosity,
and even to effect a reduction in the cost of parochial main-
tenance. The allotments soon went. The philosophers de-
nounced them, sometimes because they were cultivated with the
spade, and the farmers were glad to get rid of what they thought
was apt to make the poor too independent. Recently the practice
has been revived on entirely practical, and by no means on
sentimental grounds, bv such highly-intelligent and well-informed