96 AN AGRICULTURAL FAGGOT. 



chance of success. I do not propose to labour this 

 point, nor to enter upon the field of controversial subjects 

 which it suggests. The political combination of agri- 

 culturists in this country has never attained the formidable 

 character which may be seen in some other countries. 

 But, in spite of this, a good deal has been done by such 

 combination as has existed, and, in proof, one illustration, 

 which has now been practically removed from the category 

 of debatable subjects, may be cited, viz., the statutes 

 preventing the importation of diseases of cattle, and 

 enabling effective measures to be adopted for suppressing 

 outbreaks of disease if they occur at home. It will not 

 be denied that the satisfactory security for the health 

 of the flocks and herds of this country which farmers 

 now enjoy has been obtained by combination, and would 

 not have been obtained without it. Ex uno disce omnes. 

 What applies, unquestionably, to cattle disease may be 

 applied, at the reader's good pleasure, to other political 

 matters affecting agriculture. 



One enters perhaps on somewhat delicate ground in 

 referring to combination for social objects — in other 

 words, to farmers' clubs, in the " club " sense. It would 

 be idle to ignore the fact that in olden days, and possibly 

 to some extent now, the market-day club was not 

 altogether a desirable institution. But the club, in the 

 sense not of a mere arrangement for eating and drinking, 

 but in its more civilised modern form, has, in my judgment, 

 many advantages. Some remarks made by Mr. Clare 

 Sewell Read, in the course of a discussion on a paper 

 which I read before the Farmers' Club in 1896, impressed 

 me, because they confirmed on the highest authority a 

 notion which I had gathered in the course of my travels 

 among farmers. He said : — 



Farmers, of course, are the very worst men to combine about 

 anything. Their isolation is the chief cause of it, I believe, and 

 there is also that dogged independence which always has 

 stuck to the British farmer. I believe our social intercourse 



