Louis Napoleon sent
Lavergne to make a report on English farming; the substance of his
report is, that were France farmed on the English system by English
farmers, the corn produce would be four or five times what it is now;
leaving sheep out of the question.
The advocates of peasant-proprietorship, at least the better informed
ones, do not now suppose that a peasant receiving a few acres out of
a large English average farm (and capital to make a start) could make
a subsistence out of it. They believe that peasant-proprietors could
maintain themselves on small plots of rich land in and close to
towns, working as market-gardeners or cowkeepers rather than as
farmers.
This narrows down the peasant-proprietor theory vastly in its
practical application; it remains hardly a national question. But I
have been astonished to see in the neighbourhood of London of late
years the large "gentleman" market-gardeners steadily displacing the
smaller and all the single-handed men. The subject is so important
that I will take one of two instances in detail. I have seen a
gentleman market-gardener, eight miles or so from Covent Garden,
growing strawberries, several acres in each patch. He had young men
(a separate staff) out at daybreak to keep the birds off. The small
gardener, growing a few long beds of strawberries, is ruined by the
birds, whether he lets them eat or goes into the expense and labour
of netting.
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