[ 21, ] 



Despite its heavy normal work, this Department has 

 found the time to introduce more or less important 

 reforms in the majority of the other branches with 

 which it is supposed to deal. It has continually, and 

 it is believed usefully, made new work for itself and 

 carried out that work. It is in agriculture only that 

 the Department, conceived originally mainly as an 

 instrument for agricultural reform, has done next to 

 nothing, and the reasons for this lamentable anomaly 

 are to be sought for in causes widely different from 

 the mere pressure of other work. 



Though originally designated the Department of 

 Agriculture, &c., this Department has never, from the 

 first, been so constituted as to permit of its dealing 

 either directly or efficiently with agricultural matters. 



Lord Mayo's conception was one thing, the sadly 

 modified scheme that as the result of vehement oppo- 

 sition he was compelled to accept, another. Lord 

 Mayo accepted this as a sort of instalment, as a grant 

 of ground on which he might later build what was 

 necessary, but no one was more thoroughly alive to 

 the fact than himself, that in the shape in which his 

 cherished project ultimately saw the light, it afforded 

 little or no prospect of material improvement in agri- 

 culture. He believed that in a few years this might 

 all be changed, and had he lived, this might have been 

 so, but he fully realised the position, and his invari- 

 able reply to protests on this subject were : " We 

 must have patience ; it will all come right." 



Lord Mayo clung, however, to the idea of ultimately 

 making this reall}^ a Department of Agriculture, but 

 the Secretary of State did not approve of even this. 



