THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY SATURDAY, OCTOBER 23, 1909. PEASANT PROPRIETORS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9630, 23 October 1909, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY SATURDAY, OCTOBER 23, 1909. PEASANT PROPRIETORS.

The attitude of Unionist leaders in the United Kingdom in advocating the creation of a large class of small freeholders is one of the most noteworthy sicns of the times. For Many years this policy has been advocated by both Conservative and Liberal reformers, who have agreed to disagree i upon many other questions, but have united in declaring that the depopulation of the agricultural districts an I the decline of British agriculture can only be stayed by giving to the industrious labourer, ample oppor tunity to attain independence and comfort upon land of his own. Mr I Jesse Collings is known throughout the English-speaking world as the advocate of "three acres and a cow" tor every peasant in Britain, although this catch-phrase only partially illustrated the idea of peasant propr'etary, which in its broader sense in\olves the gradual • and constitutional abolition of the land system now peculiar to Britain, and the reestablishment of the ancient "free holds" for which England was once fa-* ois. It is pirt of our national history that when Hampden was imperilled by the attack of Charles I. upon the privileges of Parliament anl was fcr'ed, with his four associates, to claim protection from the City of London, no less than" 4,000 armed and mounted freeholders rode from Buckinghamshire to defend their member. From various cases, which are interwoven with the economic developments of r,ec n nt centuries, the land system of England became transformed, the tenantry system gradually coming into existence. As has been often pointed out, however, the British tenantry system differs fundamentally from the "leasehold" system which threatens our colonial freeholding. The Crown i here provides only the raw land, requiring the tenant to make all improvement's. In the Old Country the landlord not only provides, the land but all improvements in addition, handing the land to the agricultural tenant in going order as a highly-im-proved farm. "As has been often shown by English economists, "rackrenting" has been practically unknown in the English counties, and thfi general relationship of the \ landlord and the agricultural tenant iaas been exceedingly friendly. The system arose because under the circumstances it was mutually beneficial. The fundamental weakness of the system has been that it tended to divorce labourer from any permanent interest in the lard, so that j the intense competition of colonial, j American and foreign agriculturists

made his always precarious position i intolerable. The rise of the factory j system opened up many avenues of employment in the towns and the expansion of the English-speaking ' world encouraged agricultural emi- 1 gration overseas. The aggregate result is that the labour of the agricultural industry has been drained away. The experience of Germany and also of France, remarks a contemporary, is that the small freeholder is a stable and reliable element, whose influence is so marked in German politics that even the German Socialist is conservative as compared to his nominal ally in the United Kingdom. Moreover, tlure is no marked tendency in Germany toI wards the depopulation of the coun ■ I tryside and towards the congestion in the cities of labourers who can find no employment. What with her protective policy and her agrarian laws, Germany manages to employ her people to an extent which Englishmen must envy, all statistics concurring 'to show that there is much less unemployment and more general sufficiency in ermany than in Britain. It is, therefore, not astonishing to find that those intelligent Englishmen who nave watched with uneasiness the deeay of the agricultural industry, and who have realised that behind the Irish Nationalist agitation lay an agrarian grievance which was not to be judged by the sayings and doings of professional agitators, have been steadily modernising their views. Twentythree years ago Mr Jesse Collings forced the resignation of Lord Salisbury by carrying a Small Holdings resolution in the House of Commons agiinst the Conservative Administration of the day. Mr B ifour has now adopted the general principle of this resolution, and made a notable declaration, during the Budget debate, in approving the provision by which the Government may accept land instead of cash in payment of death duties, urging that this would assist in the creation of small holdings. Mr Joseph Chamberlain, always a friend of thi p-asant proprietor movement, has formally associated it with fiscal reform as the means whereby a better order of things may be wrought out in England. There could be no better proof of the patriotism and vitality of Biitish public life than the tact that a movement which must seriously affect land-owning throughout Great Britain is being led by statesmen who have the confidence of the landowning class, and whs may be depended upon to carefully protect every legitimate interest while effecting a beneficent reform.