number of men extracting from the soil produce which it gives perhaps reluctantly and grudgingly. … Every economist knows that you cannot increase the amount of labour you put on land, without diminishing the productiveness of that land."
We may disregard the apparently gratuitous assumption that Nature rewards man's labour "reluctantly and grudgingly." But what did Mr Balfour mean by "actual productiveness"? If he meant that land produces less wheat, barley, oats, turnips, the more labour is put into it, this is nonsense. He evidently meant that money profit to the farmer and landowner would be diminished if more money was paid for labour. But those who wish to get the people "back to the land" do not want to increase the number of agricultural labourers paid by the day, week, or year, by a master who himself has to live and pay his rent out of their labour. They want to increase the number of small landowners—men who will literally live on the fruits of their toil, and not merely produce something for their master to sell. At present, the land has to bear three charges—it must "pay" the labourer, the farmer and the landlord. We shall never approach the land question with comprehension until we learn to look upon the cultivation of land as intended in the first place to produce Food. Of course, there will generally be a surplus—and this surplus will be sold. But the more people get their food from the land at first hand, the less pauperism there will be, and the less the towns will be burdened by the crowding into them of labourers whose labour is "diminishing the actual productiveness" of the land. Land will feed a great number of people who have only to live upon it; but only a small number if their labour is to "pay" the landowner and the farmer.
There is nothing extravagant in saying this. Every other country in the world has a peasant class. England alone has none. For to call the English agricultural labourer a "peasant" is to misrepresent his condition. He is not a peasant, but a day-labourer, living in a cottage not his own, and working for a wage as much fixed by his master as it formerly was by the justices. He cannot call his soul his own. His first and last thought is how not to offend those in whose power he is. And there are many who think that
