easant Proprietorship is a system of cultivation of small holdings of land by occupiers who own the land, or hold it on some secure or permanent tenure. Perhaps there is no question on which there is a greater diversity of opinion. On the one hand the small cultivator is held up as a pattern of industry, thrift, and prosperity, and on the other as an example of unceasing toil and miserable failure.

Arthur Young held that the best system of agriculture was that which secured the largest amount of produce from the land. It is evident, however, that another consideration of great importance must be taken into account-viz. the numbers, quality, and condition of those engaged in tilling the soil. Though nations might attain to brilliant positions by trade, commerce, and the accumulation of wealth, yet the permanent strength, the solidity, and resisting power of a country must closely depend on the number and condition of its rural population. Hence if it could be proved that vast areas of land could be cultivated at the greatest money profit, by means of machinery and a handful of labourers, yet such a method of cultivation would be adverse to the real interests of the nation as a whole.

There is substantial evidence, however, that small holdings of land are more productive in proportion than large farms, and that they are specially adapted to the production of certain kinds of food. It is from these causes that the rent value and purchase price of the smaller holdings in continental countries are so much higher than are found to obtain with the larger farms of Great Britain. It is frequently quoted in opposition to this view that the yield of corn per acre is much greater in England than on the Continent. This comparison, however, is of little value from the fact that the average of continental production is much lowered through the low yields of poor land, hillsides, and

wastes, which, if in England, would not be cultivated at all. The evidence of the Royal Commission on Agriculture (1880) shows that the vast majority of holdings in the Netherlands are from 10 to 60 acres, held for the most part by cultivating owners, and that the small and medium-sized farms are generally the best cultivated and managed. Mr Jenkins, the assistant commissioner, gave many examples of what he terms 'intensive' culti vation in Holland. One of these is that of a man who owned 22 acres of land, and rented 10 acres more. He had thirty milking cows in the fields, and ten feeding beasts in the stall. He fed every year thirty beasts besides his own cast cows, and spent above £600 per annum for food, principally for winter keep.

Belgium is rather a country of small cultivators than of peasant proprietors. If we leave out of account the owners of very small plots of land, it is the small tenant-farmer who is the most important element in Belgian agriculture. In spite, however, of excessive rents, the insecurity and other drawbacks of tenancies as compared with ownership, Belgium is a striking example of the advantages of la petite culture. M. de Laveleye states that Belgium is the best cultivated and the most productive country in the world; and refers to Flanders, with land naturally the worst in Europe, as a marvellous triumph of care, industry, and forethought on the part of the cultivators. According to the report above quoted, the available supply of milk and its products per head of the population is in Belgium about twice as great as that in Great Britain. In most districts in Belgium the labourer is a petit cultivateur-i.e. while hiring himself out as a labourer, he cultivates and often owns a piece of land stocked with rabbits, pigs, poultry, goats, and sometimes one or a couple of cows. A man of this class in the Ardennes, who was working with his son for a farmer at five francs per day, was found on inquiry by the present writer to be the owner of a cottage with 6 acres of land, two cows, and other smaller