SECURITY FOR OUTLAY 223 



improvements in drainage, transport and organisation, by fostering 

 co-operation, by more extended schemes of agricultural education 

 and research, by amendment of the Agricultural Holdings Acts and 

 of the system of land tenure in order to give further security to the 

 tenant, by alteration in the basis of rating and by other means." 



Aye, but — though, indeed, we have left " the system of land 

 tenure," on the desirable changes in which the Commission preserves 

 a discreet silence, severely alone — " amendment of the Agricultural 

 Holdings Acts " has, as has been already pointed out, been the pet 

 occupation of our Parliament ever since Mr. Disraeli set the ball 

 a-rolling. For full forty-six years we have kept hammering away 

 at such work, stopping leaks, adding new patches, straightening 

 metal, and exerting our ingenuity in every conceivable direction, 

 with the hope of putting the amorphous, unsatisfactory thing into 

 useful shape ; and the response of those for whose supposed benefit 

 we have been employing our energy in this way, and who are the 

 best judges of the quality and effectiveness of the work done, is 

 the unanimous chorus of condemnation and a demand for some- 

 thing better now placed on record — something that, if we take the 

 proposals put forward by the Farmers' Union as a corollary to the 

 demand, under the present aspect is wholly unallowable, for those 

 proposals leave landlords' rights altogether unconsidered. 



Then, is not one compelled to agree with those witnesses heard — 

 tenant farmers themselves, and men of great and varied experience — 

 who, in the words of one of their number, Mr. Thomas Williams, 

 declared that " the only full security that the farmer can have is 

 that of becoming his own landlord " ? In the same strain Mr. 

 Strutt, certainly an authority in the matter, says (Report I., 1598), 

 " I should like to see farmers own their land in this country." 



That judgment does not, indeed, pretend to ignore the indubitable 

 merits of tenant farming as a means of making money under certain 

 favourable conditions, where the land is in good order and the 

 tenant, being secured in his tenancy and in the full recovery of all 

 his outlay, can lay himself out energetically for pure business, 

 without the task set him of improvement. A man with plenty 

 of skill and plenty of working capital, intent upon farming solely 

 for profit, will, if he can obtain such conditions, distinctly prefer 

 tenant farming so far as making money goes. That is the common 

 experience all the world over. Even in the countries more specifi- 

 cally identified with ownership, such as France and Germany, for 

 sheer money-making tenancy under favourable riroumstalioea ifl 

 given the preference. The French fennier at Normandy or the 



