“No: they have a hope of saving enough to support them in their latter days, in their native province. But it is a very hard case; and a man will bear much before he will submit to exile, even from his paternal estate. In one place, in France, I saw several horses with a man attending each, with pannier-loads of sea ooze which they were carrying many miles to manure their little fields. In another place, I saw women cutting grass for their cows by the side of the road, in harvest time: and this was in a rich country too.” “It is a pity there was no large farmer in the neighbourhood to employ them to better purpose.” “So I thought when I saw a stout, hearty man walking seven miles to sell two chickens, which would not bring him more than a shilling a piece, as he told me.” “Why, they would not pay the wear of his shoes and their own feed—to say nothing of his time and labour.” “But I cannot see, Joe,” said his father, “why these people should not keep their bit of land, and labour for others also. It is what some of our cottagers do.” “They are above it, father, sometimes; and in most cases there is no work for them. It is generally found that those who have been brought up to a little estate of their own never do labour with heart and good will for other people. A man would rather dawdle about his own little farm, fancying that there is something for him to do, than let himself for a labourer. He will look for a hole in his hedge, he will carry earth in a basket to the top of a mountain, he will walk ten miles to sell an egg, and he will be content with twopence a day on his own ground instead of half-a-crown on another man’s, if he is born to call himself a landed proprietor. It frequently happens, however, that there is no employment for him elsewhere: for where these small properties abound, there are not many large: so that the population is, in those places, far too great in proportion,—not perhaps to the land,—but to its productiveness.” “Do you mean to say that there is this poverty wherever there are small properties?” “By no means. In some districts the soil is so fertile that it repays most amply whatever labour is spent upon it. On the banks of certain rivers, and sometimes throughout a whole province, the little farmers are very comfortably off as long as they make their children provide for themselves by some other way than cutting the land into strips. But I think I may say that wherever capital is required to improve the soil, and wherever an estate is liable to be divided into roods, or half and quarter roods, such a possession is more of a curse than a blessing to the owner and to society.” “I suppose, Joe,” said a bystander, “that you are as great an admirer of the law of primogeniture as any true Englishman should be? Of course you are, as you say so much against small properties.”