Farming as a Profession 195 



more encouraging every year. The problem 

 created for the Galway landlord by the agrarian 

 agitator to-day may be created for the Yorkshire 

 landlord by the socialist agitator to-morrow, and 

 Lord Ashtown has already demonstrated the only 

 apparent solution. Spencer argues the matter to 

 this effect : " If the individual have a valid right 

 to the earth, it follows that nobody else has any 

 right to it, and a single owner may with equity 

 evict the whole human race from it." Of course, 

 the law of ownership does not interpret " valid 

 right " in any such sense, but the responsibility 

 remains for the owner to see that his land supports 

 his fellow-man or to lose it. 



While this responsibility grows more exacting, 

 educated faculty deserts the soil more and more. 

 The literature of agriculture is extensive, and yet 

 I know of only one agricultural writer in Europe 

 with a literary style. It cannot be that the subject 

 precludes style, for Huxley made himself delight- 

 fully readable on the mud of mid-ocean bottoms, 

 even with his conclusions all wrong ; and Grant 

 Allen told the tragic life of the garden spider 

 with impressions that can never leave my mind. 



With all the generous possibilities of agricul- 

 tural life, we find its current expression often 

 painfully mean, and the agricultural press actually 

 denying the proved productiveness of the soil, as 

 if it were the business of the editors to discourage 

 production and to multiply poverty. Take an 

 example regarding a recent article of my own in 

 the Saturday Review. Every fact in it is denied 



