I am aware that there are few subjects upon which there are such fierce controversies as the possibilities of making a livelihood out of small holdings, but Irish cottiers do it, and in regions infinitely worse adapted for the purpose than our Essex corn lands, and possessing none of the advantages which civilization and co-operation place at the command of an intelligently directed body of husbandmen. Talk about the land not being worth cultivating! Go to the Swiss Valleys and examine for yourself the miserable patches of land, hewed out as it were from the heart of the granite mountains, where the cottager grows his crops and makes a livelihood. No doubt he has his Alp, where his cows pasture in summer-time, and his other occupations which enable him to supplement the scanty yield of his farm garden among the crags; but if it pays the Swiss mountaineer in the midst of the eternal snows, far removed from any market, to cultivate such miserable soil in the brief summer of the high Alps, it is impossible to believe that Englishmen, working on English soil, close to our markets and enjoying all the advantages of co-operation, cannot earn their daily bread by their daily toil. The soil of England is not unkindly, and although much is said against our climate, it is, as Mr. Russell Lowell observes, after a lengthened experience of many countries and many climes, "the best climate in the whole world for the labouring man." There are more days in the English year on which a man can work out of doors with a spade with comparative comfort than in any other country under heaven. I do not say that men will make a fortune out of the land, nor do I pretend that we can, under the grey English skies, hope ever to vie with the productiveness of the Jersey farms; but I am prepared to maintain against all comers that it is possible for an industrious man to grow his rations, provided he is given a spade with which to dig and land to dig in. Especially will this be the case with intelligent direction and the advantages of co-operation.