vast majority was given by artisans and landless rural
labourers. The peasant, like every property-owner, is an enemy of
fantastic schemes of confiscation and of general plunder lavishly
embellished with promises of Utopia. Therefore Social-Democrats will
rather see the countryside of Great Britain turned into a wilderness
than see it peopled by peasants.

Desperately anxious lest the Government of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman
should create a British peasantry, the Socialist press opposed the
creation of a British peasantry as unscientific and certain to lead to
disaster. The people were told in countless articles that peasant
proprietorship had proved a failure everywhere. Under the heading "The
Small-Holding Fraud" the "Social-Democrat" showed the true motive of
the Socialist agitation by expressing the hope that "The Government
will assuredly fail in their attempt to erect a peasant proprietary
barrier against the rising proletariat"[722]--Has the Socialist outcry
against creating peasant proprietors influenced Sir Henry
Campbell-Bannerman's Government in its land-settlement policy? Did Sir
Henry Campbell-Bannerman wish to satisfy the Socialists by rather
creating small leaseholders than small freehold farmers?

The positive proposals of Socialists for bringing about a revival of
agriculture are frankly Utopian. Their proposals can of course not be
practical, because they object to the present agricultural
arrangements of Great Britain and to those prevailing on the continent
of Europe. Many Socialists desire the towns to control and resettle
the country. "The towns should claim the right of dictating to England
the way in which the land should be put to profit. The great majority
of the classes nearest the land, squires and farmers and parsons, are
disqualified respectively by self-interest, by religious prejudice
that scruples at anything that may lead to the mental enfranchisement
of the poor, and by sheer sluggishness of intellect joined to a blind
selfishness without parallel in any class of English society. The
land and the labourer have hitherto been left to them. And we want a
change of management."[723]

Socialists want a "change of management" in agriculture, replacing the
expert by the amateur in accordance with their general policy of
turning everything upside down. Their ideal would seem to be that the
owners of land should be dispossessed and driven into the towns, and
be replaced by Socialistic tow