Page:Peasant proprietary in Ireland; a rejoinder.djvu/21

 a desert.' The condition of these provinces to-day attests the axiomatic truth.

In Belgium, the 'small-farm provinces' own more cattle, yield more produce, are more carefully cultivated, and have more agricultural capital than those in which the large estates are predominant. The Fleming has a saying which is worthy of note—De spa is di goudmyn der boeren (the spade is a gold mine of the farmer), and in Lombardy they have a cognate proverb, which their industry illustrates—se l'aratro ha il fomero di ferro, la vanga ha la punta d'oro (if the plough has a ploughshare of iron, the spade has a point of gold).

Nor does it seem to the present writer that agricultural life, the inclination for which, says Mr. Moricc, 'seems everywhere to be co-existent with ignorance,' is really at all deserving of the contempt which he appears to entertain for it, a contempt which is certainly not shared by the great poets and thinkers of all ages. The colossal development of manufacturing industry in England has produced a state of things there which, even from the mere material point of view, is already seen to be dangerous, and which a certain easily conceivable set of circumstances may yet make disastrous; while the moral, not to mention the closely-allied æsthetic results, have been still more palpably unfortunate. Mr. Froude is well worth listening to on this subject. In his last work, Oceana, occurs the following notable passage—one which the rulers of a young State would do to lay to heart:—

As to the social effects of a system of peasant