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VIII. — Address of the President to the General Meeting, held 

 December 12, 1866. 



The Eoyal Agricultural Society not having held a Country Meeting 

 this year, the Council have lost their customary opportunity of meeting 

 the members of the Society, and of manifesting, by the success of their 

 show, the vitality of the Society and the steady progress of British 

 agriculture. I therefore take this opportunity of making a few remarks 

 on some of the topics which possess most interest for agriculturists 

 at the present time, in the hope that other gentlemen may join in the 

 discussion, and give the Meeting the benefit of their experience and 

 their opinions on those subjects. I wish fii'st to mention that I shall 

 only advert to those topics which possess a common interest for all 

 our members, and shall avoid all such as may be likely to arouse feelings 

 of antagonism and class interests. I press this point strongly, because 

 some of these forbidden topics involve questions of great im2)ortance, 

 and, as Chairman of the Journal Committee, I have frequently been 

 urged to take steps to procure articles on such questions as leases, 

 tenant right, preservation of game, &c. These and other similar 

 questions are, no dovibt, deeply interesting to both landlords and 

 tenants, and nothing can be more reasonable than that men who have 

 a common interest in any subjects of this nature shoidd meet and 

 discuss them ; should, if they think fit, write pamphlets and news- 

 paper articles, and endeavour, as much as possible, to enlist public 

 opinion in support of their particular views ; but when all is done 

 landlord and tenant must in the future, as in the past, settle their 

 mutual rights and privileges by individual negotiation and agree- 

 ment; and in the great majority of cases such negotiations will 

 assuredly end in land being let at its market value, such market value 

 varying in some measure according to the security afforded to the 

 tenant, that if he lays out his capital on land that is not his own ho 

 will get it back with fair profit. Wliilst, however, admitting the full 

 importance of this class of subjects, I do not hesitate to state that the 

 consideration and discussion of them were not the objects for which 

 this Society was founded. I am one of those who took an active, 

 though a very subordinate part in its formation : I have been a 

 member of the Council from that time to this, and I can safely say 

 that the principal aim of the founders was to promote the improve- 

 ment and development of those two great branches of industry known 

 as stock and crop farming, upon which the jirosperity of both land- 

 lords and tenants must ultimately depend, and in the prosecution of 

 which landlords and tenants can heartily pull together. I must here 

 guard myself against the supposition that I mean to exclude from the 



