Estates here being small, the farms are small also; and they could not well be large in such a hilly country--haulage would be too costly, if a farm went over many ridges and coombes. Usually they are too small, and two or three might be thrown into one, one set of buildings serving for the whole, likewise one set of implements, and fewer horses--six horses have sufficed, where three farmers had each been keeping three. Even in districts where estates are large, and ground is flat, the farms are seldom large enough to give the best results. The ideal is the largest area that can possibly be worked from one homestead; and in some districts that may be very large indeed. No doubt, the _latifundia_ were not a success; but that was due to slavery, not to size. Here in England our countryfolk would make a better stock as labourers on big estates than in starvation on small-holdings. The labourer has certainly fared badly in the past. He grew the dear loaf, and never had a bite at it. But, when economists go writing of “the hungry ’forties,” they should remember that there were such things as trout and salmon, hares and rabbits, partridges and pheasants. My grandfather writes to my father, 3 December 1844:--“I was told yesterday at Moreton that many travellers now give their horses a portion of wheat flour. Some are too scrupulous to do it: but the labourer would say Why give barley, as that is my food, and the Scotch and Irish may say Why give oats.” He writes a few days later, 15 December 1844:--“I had some conversation with the Lustleigh parson yesterday. He said we had no poor here, and the labourers were better off than where he came from.”--He had just left a living in Norfolk.--“There the wages were less, and they never tasted animal food from one year to another, but here they all managed to salt in a pig.” He writes on 2 December 1849:--“Bad as times are, I have known them far worse under Protection.... Such was the distress among farmers then that labourers were put up to auction by the parish authorities, and hired for 6_d._ to 9_d._ per day.” And on 7 February 1850:--“There is no grumbling among the labourers, for now they have a cheap loaf, and are able to get a bit of meat to eat with it.... Besides under Free Trade they get salt, sugar, tea, coffee, etc., at a much lower rate than formerly, when their wages were but a half or a third.” On 13 July 1851 he writes:--“I see a vast improvement in agriculture in this neighbourhood since Free Trade came in.... Protection did but foster indolence.” Fifty years later, when Protection was allied with Tariff Reform, an ardent Liberal said to me:--“No, ’t ain’t no tariffs and ’tection that they farmers need: ’t be nothin’ but lime and doong.” And certainly the land was starved.