NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.
I have had by me for some time a small pamphlet, “The Agricultural Labourer, by a Farmer’s Son,”10 kindly sent me by the author. The matter of it is excellent as far as it reaches; but the writer speaks as if the existing arrangements between landlord, farmer, and labourer must last for ever. If he will look at the article on “Peasant Farming” in the ‘Spectator’ of July 4th of this year, he may see grounds for a better hope. That article is a review of Mr. W. T. Thornton’s “Plea for Peasant Proprietors;” and the following paragraph from it may interest, and perhaps surprise, other readers besides my correspondent. Its first sentence considerably surprises me to begin with; so I have italicized it:—
“This country is only just beginning to be seriously roused to the fact that it has an agricultural question at all; and some of those most directly interested therein are, in their pain and surprise at the discovery, hurrying so fast the wrong way, that it will probably take a long time to bring them round again to sensible thoughts, after most of the rest of the community are ready with an answer.
“The primary object of this book is to combat the pernicious error of a large school of English economists with reference to the hurtful character of small farms and small landed properties.… One would think that the evidence daily before a rural economist, in the marvellous extra production of a market garden, or even a peasant’s allotment, over an ordinary farm, might suffice to raise doubts whether [218]vast fields tilled by steam, weeded by patent grubbers, and left otherwise to produce in rather a happy-go-lucky fashion, were likely to be the most advanced and profitable of all cultivated lands. On this single point of production, Mr. Thornton conclusively proves the small farmer to have the advantage.
“The extreme yields of the very highest English farming are even exceeded in Guernsey, and in that respect the evidence of the greater productiveness of small farming over large is overwhelming. The Channel Islands not only feed their own population, but are large exporters of provisions as well.
“Small farms being thus found to be more advantageous, it is but an easy step to peasant proprietors.”
Stop a moment, Mr. Spectator. The step is easy, indeed;—so is a step into a well, or out of a window. There is no question whatever, in any country, or at any time, respecting the expediency of small farming; but whether the small farmer should be the proprietor of his land, is a very awkward question indeed in some countries. Are you aware, Mr. Spectator, that your ‘easy step,’ taken in two lines and a breath, means what I, with all my Utopian zeal, have been fourteen years writing on Political Economy, without venturing to hint at, except under my breath;—some considerable modification, namely, in the position of the existing British landlord?—nothing less, indeed, if your ‘step’ were to be completely taken, than the reduction of him to a ‘small peasant proprietor’? And unless he can show some reason against it, the ‘easy step’ will most assuredly be taken with him.
Yet I have assumed, in this Fors, that it is not to be taken. That under certain modifications of his system of Rent, he may still remain lord of his land,—may, and ought, provided always he knows what it is to be lord of anything. Of which I hope to reason farther in the Fors for November of this year. [219]
1 Read Isaiah vi. through carefully. ↑
2 The reader will perhaps now begin to see the true bearing of the earlier letters in Fors. Re-read, with this letter, that on the campaign of Crecy. ↑
3 I wish I could find room also for the short passages I omit; but one I quoted before, “As no one will deny that man possesses carnivorous teeth,” etc., and the others introduce collateral statements equally absurd, but with which at present we are not concerned. ↑
4 I must warn you against the false reading of the original, in many editions. Fournier’s five volume one is altogether a later text, in some cases with interesting intentional modifications, probably of the fifteenth century; but oftener with destruction of the older meaning. It gives this couplet, for instance,—
“Si n’avoit el plaisir de rien,
Que quant elle donnoit du sien.”
The old reading is,
“Si n’avoit elle joie de rien,
Fors quant elle povoit dire, ‘tien.’
Didot’s edition, Paris, 1814, is founded on very early and valuable texts; but it is difficult to read. Chaucer has translated a text some twenty or thirty years later in style; and his English is quite trustworthy as far as it is carried. For the rest of the Romanee, Fournier’s text is practically good enough, and easily readable. ↑
5 Fr. ‘chetive,’ rhyming accurately to ‘ententive.’ ↑
7 Even after eighteen hundred years of sermons, the Christian public do not clearly understand that ‘two coats,’ in the brief sermon of the Baptist to repentance, mean also, two petticoats, and the like.
I am glad that Fors obliges me to finish this letter at Lucca, under the special protection of St. Martin. ↑
8 Fr.,
“Si que par oula la chemise
Lui blancheoit la char alise.”
Look out ‘Alice,’ in Miss Yonge’s Dictionary of Christian Names and remember Alice of Salisbury. ↑
9 I believe the pale roses are meant to be white, but are tinged with red that they may not contend with the symbolic brightness of the lilies. ↑
10 Macintosh, 24, Paternoster Row. ↑
FORS CLAVIGERA.
