THE CALL FOR RURAL RECONSTRUCTION 5 



scarcely picture to ourselves a different state of things, and that we 

 ignore its inconveniences and drawbacks, plain as they are to the 

 unprejudiced eye — as we used to ignore the difficulties of locomotion 

 before there were railways ; and the labour of domestic management 

 when water had still to be carried up and down by hand, and there 

 were sundry other inconveniences and troubles that modern im- 

 provements have since swept away, but that we bore good 

 humouredly, because we did not know that they were really 

 removable. 



There it was, this land system of olden days — there much of it 

 still is ! For we have not really yet got out of the old rut. There 

 has been, there was bound to be, a frequent clashing of interests. I 

 have been a reader of the agricultural press since 1863. There were 

 spirited discussions even in those early days, when the motto was 

 set up : '" Property has its duties as well as its rights," and " Land- 

 lord's right must not mean Tenant's wrong." There have been a 

 succession of disputed points since. The period in which the 

 atmosphere got most heated was of course that of the Farmers' 

 Alliance, of the work of which, as a committeeman of the East 

 Sussex Branch, I saw a good deal. A Latin proverb has it that one 

 house will not nourish two dogs (una domus non alit duos canes) ; and 

 an Italian puts it that you cannot keep two feet in one shoe (non si 

 possono tenere due piedi in una Scarpa). We have tried to achieve 

 this " impossibility " through generations. There must, under such 

 dualism, always be a temptation to make the partnership practically 

 existing something of a " leonine society," in which, as Lafontaine 

 says, " the plea of the stronger party will always be reckoned the 

 best." That is the famous French Partage de Montgomery. We 

 have seen something of these divergencies of interests in the recent 

 controversy about security of tenure. 



Naturally, where there are two parties to an arrangement, rights 

 on either side must to some extent be sacrificed, and so there results 

 a bargain in which the truth of Lafontaine's maxim often enough 

 reveals itself. The effect of such bargaining to agriculture is, that 

 it necessarily loses its freedom, becomes hidebound, with its develop- 

 ment and advance hindered. We have failed to notice the full 

 bearing of this, as already observed, as a consequence of long habit — 

 ' my very chains and I grew friends," as at Chillon. But to one who 

 has been about in the world and has seen the benefit of fully free and 

 unchecked development in the agriculture of other countries, the effect 

 is very noticeable. Embarrassed by such conditions, our agriculture 

 has got into a groove in which less remunerative cultivation than 



