“That passion for becoming proprietors, so widely spread in our own country districts, is unknown, and probably will long continue so, amongst the agricultural classes in England. The example of Ireland [it might have been added, of Wales], where the land has been very much subdivided, and where the population which maintains itself on it has become excessive, has strengthened the opinion amongst large landed proprietors in England as to the evil effects of small holdings. I think I scarcely exaggerate when I say that certainly, in the southern counties of England, a peasant possessing an acre of land would be a rarity. Probably it is to this impossibility of becoming small proprietors that we must attribute the taste which the labouring classes in England show for ornamenting their houses. If a working man has saved any money, he will employ it in buying a set of furniture, and making his cottage look gay; whereas, in France, he would have laid it aside in the hope of acquiring a bit of land; so that nothing can be more different than the wretched cabins of our own rural districts and the cottage of an English labourer, with its many little appliances of comfort and even luxury. In general the English peasant lives much less sparingly, and spends upon his meal twice as much as the French: it is true that the climate requires a more substantial style of diet.” These observations would have been more strictly true if they had been made a few years ago. Within that time the passion for property has sprung up not only amongst those who call themselves “operatives” (journeymen weavers, shoemakers, &c.), but even, to a certain extent, amongst farm-labourers. Recent alterations in the laws of partnership have encouraged what are called “co-operative societies,” who not only open “stores” for the sale of all the necessaries of life, on the joint-stock principle of division of profits, but build cottages which, by certain arrangements, may become the property of the tenant. A whole village has just been built in Yorkshire, on this principle of the tenants becoming eventually the landlords. Not only this, but the same desire for independence—an excellent feeling in itself—is leading the same class to purchase cottage property whenever it comes into the market. If this ambition to become a purchaser were confined to a desire upon every man’s part to feel himself absolute master of the home he lived in, then, whatever large proprietors or able political economists might have to say, it would be an object which would deserve the very highest respect. But, unfortunately, the feeling is not altogether that of desiring to live in peace under one’s own vine and fig-tree: it is the wish to have a tenement to let out to others. It is comparatively seldom that a small piece of land, suited to the sum at such a purchaser’s command, is thrown into the market. Cottages, on the other