First, Production on the large scale is cheaper than on the small;
this is as true of agriculture as of other industries. The large
farmer has one fixed and one movable steam-engine of his own; he has
his own drills, threshing and winnowing machines, reaping and mowing
machines. The petty proprietor may hire these, but at a dear rate,
and few of them can work to any advantage on his small patches of
corn. The large farmer has large fields; he saves area as against the
petty proprietors; he has fewer headlands and fences, harbouring
weeds and stopping the sun and air. The large farmer can work corn
and sheep together; one shepherd and his boy will look after 500
ewes. You may travel 200 miles by rail in France and not see two
flocks of sheep. Sheep-farming is seen all the world over to be an
industry that pays on the large scale; and the want of it injures the
corn produce of the French petty proprietor. 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