THE WANT OF CAPITAL 399 



In these circumstances the demand is made that the other form 

 of intensive cultivation should have its chance. If intensive 

 capital is not forthcoming, let intensive labour try its hand on 

 smaller areas. But here again landlords are in a dilemma. Whether 

 the existing system is to be developed, or whether, in favourable 

 situations, an extensive trial is to be made of the new, money is 

 equally needed. Private lenders are suspicious of land as a security, 

 and owners themselves are shy of adding by further investments on 

 their land to the spoils of those who propose to tax them out of 

 existence. They are naturally timid of depositing all their eggs in 

 one rickety basket, the bottom of which may at any moment be 

 pulled out. They might borrow from the State ; but the State, 

 instead of assisting them to revive the old system or to make trial 

 of the new, exercises its ingenuity hi devising fresh schemes for 

 their further impoverishment. The deadlock thus produced may 

 be profitable to politicians ; but the drain on the national resources 

 caused by its continuance is great, and the loss which is inflicted 

 on both tenant-farmers and wage-earning labourers is daily increas- 

 ing. Meanwhile, unless impoverished landlords can obtain State 

 assistance, their only resource is to sell their estates. Where this 

 course is adopted, the interests of tenant-farmers are often seriously 

 prejudiced. A sale forces them to adopt one of two courses. If 

 they buy the land they occupy, they strip themselves of their working 

 capital. If their farms are sold over their heads, they risk a still 

 heavier loss. Purchase is the lesser of two evils. But, when the two 

 alternatives are presented, they also stand in need of State assistance, 

 which will enable them to borrow the whole purchase-money at 

 moderate rates, and repayable by annual instalments. 



Besides the ordinary landlords, there is another class of owner 

 whose position is serious. Clerical tithe-owners are threatened with 

 the same general dangers as lay landowners, and they have besides 

 their own special risks from the possible disendowment of the 

 Church in England. They are powerless to sell. They can, at 

 present, only await events. Yet in more stable and more prosperous 

 times, it might have been possible to suggest an arrangement for 

 tithe redemption which, with the help of the legislature, would be 

 advantageous alike to them, to the tithe-payer, and to the community. 

 The experiment might have been tried in Wales. As an alter- 

 native to the proposed disendowment, it is a policy which would 

 go far to satisfy some of the parties concerned. It would benefit 



