456 A FARMERS YEAR 



(2) the removal or remission of the unjust land tax, (3) the 

 equalisation of the rating and other burdens upon real and 

 personal property, and (4) the passing of a thorough-going and 

 really comprehensive Act inflicting severe penalties upon dishonest 

 traders who, amongst other frauds, sell foreign meat for British, 

 and colour the fat of animals and kindred substances in such a way 

 that the public buy them believing them to be butter. That some 

 adequate and necessary legislation of this sort has not been enacted 

 long ago is, as many of us think, nothing less than a scandal. 

 Also, if it is not so already, it should be made illegal for the 

 keepers of restaurants and hotels, when asked for butter and paid 

 for butter, in its place, as they often do, knowingly to supply 

 margarine to their customers ; and if it is so already, then the law 

 should be enforced. But what hope is there of most of these 

 reforms? Very little I imagine. 1 



The house of the agricultural interest is a house divided 

 against itself, therefore it cannot stand, and those who dwell 

 in it are a feeble and a frightened folk. Moreover, owners of 

 land and tenants of land muster but a few votes between them, 

 whereas the labourers, who really hold the balance of political 



1 As these proofs leave their author's hands the Sale of Food and Drugs 

 Bill is passing through the report stage in the House of Commons, and, pre- 

 sumably, will soon be law. Such as it is agriculturists will accept it with 

 gratitude, and in the pious hope that it may not become a dead-letter through a 

 lack of the enforcement of its provisions, especially, as I trust may be the case, 

 if it makes it punishable to palm off foreign meat as British fed and provides 

 machinery to detect the fraud. It does seem lamentable, however, that this 

 opportunity was not taken to make it illegal to colour margarine to repre- 

 sent butter. Such colouring can have but one object. To urge that under 

 the law margarine cannot be sold as butter scarcely touches the point, 

 since in its tinted condition it can be, and is, supplied to the customers of 

 eating-places who are paying for butter and would not, for the most part, 

 knowingly consume margarine. In its natural, uncoloured condition this 

 and other tricks would be impossible, and it is no consolation to the unwil- 

 ling absorber of margarine to be told that the dishonest person who passes 

 the stuff off on him as butter bought it from a tub labelled Margarine, and 

 not from one labelled Butter. Nor is it any consolation to the British farmer, 

 whose produce is thus exposed to a competition manifestly unfair. 



