CONCLUSION 343 



Mr. Asquith, when Prime Minister, declared the value of such credit 

 to be so well established that no further inquiry into its merits was 

 needed. However, Lord Lincolnshire's successors have done 

 nothing to give agriculture the benefit promised. Like those 

 ingenious, but wrong-headed, grooms of whom Captain Dwyer tells 

 in his " Handy Horse Book," who, to dry a horse coming home hot, 

 would try every conceivable method except the right one, that of 

 rubbing it down, they have expended their ingenuity in devising 

 a variety of fancy means which have, one and all, led to no practical 

 result. They have appealed to joint stock banks ; they have offered 

 individual credit on the recommendation of county councils. And 

 the result is nil. Evidently they will not see what is plain and 

 palpable to every one concerned elsewhere, namely, that credit 

 required under the circumstances kept in view necessarily has to be 

 dispensed on different lines from what we may call capital credit, 

 inasmuch as the guarantee for repayment to be given cannot possibly 

 be that ordinarily taken, of a pledge of attachable possessions, but 

 must needs be sought in the judicious and profitable employment of 

 the loan raised. Of the capacity of an intending borrower to give 

 such — that is, his professional proficiency, and his honesty, and, by 

 the side of that, of the promising character of his opportunity — 

 neither Government officers nor joint stock bankers, nor yet county 

 councils, can judge with any certainty of judging right. " Suppose 

 that we sell up all these people," so remarked to me the late Duke of 

 Devonshire, " what do we get ? ' That is, indeed, assuming a little 

 too much. For we should get something. But the very object of 

 co-operative credit is to safeguard the process against the danger of 

 having to sell any one up. It is aimed at avoiding that. The 

 borrower's neighbours, engaged in the same pursuits, knowing him 

 and making themselves responsible with him, can judge of these 

 things. And they can do more. They can watch him, and if they 

 should find him deteriorating in character or standing, or playing 

 the lender false in the employment of his loan, they can stop hia 

 loan at the very first warning, before harm has been done. The 

 Government officers, the county councils and the joint stork hankers 

 are wholly unable to do this. They may find the man all right at 

 the time, and his business promising — which will still be only a very 

 independable estimate ; but before the money heroines recoverable 

 he may have become negligent — and the money will be losl . There 

 is grave danger in credit uncoupled with very full responsibility 

 above all things when the money comes from such a body as the 

 State, which is now considered fair game for robbing or cheating. 



