vi INTRODUCTION. 



present generation, it must be admitted that all 

 farmers could not at all times be so described. 

 Landowners, like other men, were actuated by 

 self-interest in devising safeguards for the pro- 

 tection of their property from injury, and these 

 safeguards, formulated in many cases by persons 

 having more legal than agricultural knowledge, 

 were often needlessly, and in some instances 

 grotesquely, irksome. But the point is that, 

 while they frequently hampered an improving 

 farmer and hindered progressive farming, they 

 also served to preserve the land from being 

 pilfered of its fertility. The old restrictive 

 covenants have gone, and the principle of freedom 

 of cultivation has been adopted by Act of Par- 

 liament. But whether its ownership remains in 

 private hands, is vested in the State or in local 

 authorities, or is transferred to the occupiers, the 

 land must be fairly dealt by, and the maintenance 

 of its fertility should, in the national interest, be 

 the paramount consideration. Warnings are not 

 lacking from new countries that the self-interest 

 of the occupier is not always a sufficient protection 

 for the land. Under whatever conditions the land 

 may be farmed, no system can, from the national 

 point of view, be satisfactory which allows the 

 economic exigencies of the present generation to 

 endanger the nation's wealth. 



It is not a simple problem to reconcile free scope 

 for the enterprise of the occupier with protection 

 for the land, but its solution is facilitated in this 



