The impossibility of carrying out such a scheme need hardly be indicated. How could the "surplus hands," the outcasts of the factory system, find the money to buy even one share in O'Connor's Company? How could the town-bred artisan cultivate his little holding without knowledge, capital, equipment, or direction? Could such tiny plots, unskilfully tilled by amateur farmers, be made capable of supporting even the most industrious and capable of the new owners? How could such ill-equipped amateurs compete successfully against the capitalist farmer, skilled in his trade and provided with all the machinery and tools required for modern farming? If this were impossible, how was the Company to get back its "rent" without which it could not extend its operations? How could a sufficient supply of land be procured in a country where great capitalist landholders looked with jealousy upon an independent and self-sufficing peasantry? Moreover, the cotton lords and the railway kings, the successful heads of the professions, the thrifty landholders with a traditional title were all eager to become purchasers of any land offered for sale, and were able and willing to pay a price far beyond the economic value of the land, on account of the social and political prestige still associated with a proprietary estate. Even had this not been the case, the inevitable result of the operations of a great land-purchasing company was bound to speedily raise the already inflated price of land, to the extent of making commercial investments in estates extremely difficult. And so small a sum as £130,000 would do little towards setting up a peasant proprietary in the teeth of a thousand obstacles.
The difficulties of the new enterprise were complicated by O'Connor's extraordinary indifference and ignorance in all matters of business. His own finances were a mystery. At one time he boasted of his estates and capital, and posed as running the movement and financing the Star out of his own pocket. At others he appeared in his truer colours as a reckless and extravagant spendthrift, unable to find funds for the most necessary purposes. Under his later management the Star, once a mine of wealth, had become less and less prosperous. He kept no accounts; he could not make the simplest calculations; he destroyed balance-sheets; he took no trouble to give his Company a legal position; he gave himself the airs of a prince. Moreover, his incapacity to transact business was no longer a mere matter of temperament. Reckless living, a constant whirl of excitement, heroic but futile exertions had
