The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1881-11-26 00:00:00

MR. SHAW LEFEVRE ON THE LAND
QUESTION. •

Mr. Shaw Lefevre' MX., writes to The Times to ex-
plain that though in the main he agrees with the sub-
stance of Mr. Cairn's remarks in his address to the Statis-
tical Society, he dissents from the comparison which
Mr. Caird instituted between the average British farmer
and the French peasant owner and the deductions
drawn from it. Mr. Caird, supposing the English
farmer to rent 168 acres, with a farming capital of
£1;300, and the French peasant proprietor to have the
same amount of capital embarked in the ownership
and cultivation of twenty-two acres reckons the profit
of the former at £l3O a yes and of the latter at £53
a year. Mr. Shaw Lefevr.; however, thinks that the
average English farmer does not make more than
£lOO profit a year, and that the French cultivator
hardly holds more than from ten to twenty acres, of a
value of about £7OO, for which, in addition to food, he
makes a profit of, say, £5O a year.
The French peasant owner puts all the labour of himself
and his family, into the land ; it is labour of the most
assiduous and unremitting character, often almost excessive,
but prompted and guided by that passionate love for the
land which possesses the French peasant, and by the certainty
that every result of it will ensue to his benefit ; the three
profits of landlord, tenant, and labourer centre in one
person, and being combined together, and not antagonistic,
make up tor all the advantages which greater capital and
better appliances give to the larger farmer..
On land of equal fertility in France and England Mr.
Shaw Lefevre thinks the yield is about equal ; but the
French peasant increases his return by poultry, eggs,
and garden produce. There is evidence of a similar
state of things in the reports of Professor Baldwin on,
small farms in Ireland. The English farmer, how-
ever, is of a suptrior social status to the French
peasant owner and employs more laoour ; and land
which in England would employ a farmer and
from three to six labourers would in France sup-
port eight peasant owners and their families. One of
the most serious questions for English agriculture is•
the difficulty of finding labourers, who are drawn away
by emigration or to work in towns. Land reform,
then, so as to give these men an interest in the land
and attach them to their native places, is a labourer's
question as much as a landlord and tenant question.
Whatever may be the case with Ireland, Mr. Shaw
Lefevre does not think that any general scheme of
Peasant ownership could be introduced artificially into
ngiand, though much may be expected from freeing
the land from its present shackles. Mr. Shaw
Lefevre, though admitting that in parts of England
suitable to small cultivation many small owners may
arise, says :
Felieving in this possibility, I still hold that England will
in the main, and for more years to come than we need con-
template, be a country of large properties and of large
tenancies, and that the relation of landlord and tenant, a
comparatively subordinate question in other countries, will
continue to be all important, and as I do not believe In the
expediency or justice of a movement to invest the existing
tenants with co-partnership in the lancrof their landlords,
I most cordially concur in nearly all that has been so ably
said.by Mr. Caird on the relation of these classes.

King Oscar, of Sweden, has completed a new drama
in five acts, entitled "Ile Castle of Kronberg," which is to
be put upon the boards in the course of this winter at
Stockholm.

•