To make birdfarming successful the
proper plan is to keep a moderate number of as many birds as
possible--fowls, "galeenies," ducks, geese, turkeys, large pigeons--
and to go in for eggs as well as fowls. I have not seen peasant-
proprietors in England attempting this, which seems to me one of the
most hopeful of experiments for them.
The second point urged by Mill, and still by some, is that peasant-
proprietors are better off than English labourers. With the present
price of agricultural labour in England this seems to be very
generally not the case; the French peasant-proprietors and the
agricultural lower classes in Germany are (with small exceptions) now
worse off than the English farm-labourer; they work very much harder
and they get less to eat. The economic truth doubtless is that the
hired labourer may or may not be better off than the peasant-
proprietor, according to circumstances; and circumstances in England
just now are in favour of the hired labourer.
Then as to independence, it may fairly be questioned whether a good
agricultural workman, now practically liberated from the Law of
Settlement, and who can command a fair wage anywhere, is not really
more independent than a French peasant absolutely tied to a three-
acre plot for life.
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