A NATIONAL AGRICULTURAL POLICY 333 



proprietors. But there is clear scope for such an 

 improvement and simplification of the land-laws as 

 would remove some of the stumbling-blocks from the 

 path of those who would seek to establish more people 

 on the soil by means of private or co-operative effort on 

 the lines I have already detailed. I think, also, that 

 the State should relieve agriculturists of some of those 

 permanent financial burdens of which Mr. Alec Steel 

 speaks so forcibly, and that the local authorities should 

 be reduced to reason in respect to their abnormally 

 heavy taxation, especially as applied to those glass- 

 houses which represent one of the British grower's best 

 means of fighting foreign competition. I am strongly 

 convinced, too, that the Government should, at least, 

 do all that is possible to foster those various subsidiary 

 industries which represent the present-day hope of the 

 British agriculturist ; that they should carry out a 

 scheme for the promotion of agricultural education on 

 essentially practical lines; that experimental farms, 

 especially in connection with fruit-culture, should be 

 set up in every district where they are likely to be of 

 direct service ; that assistance should be given in the 

 setting up of agricultural credit banks ; and that a 

 more generous measure of financial support should be 

 extended to the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries with 

 a view to enabling it to increase its powers of usefulness 

 to the agricultural community. These are directions in 

 which the Government alone can act, and, considering 

 the magnitude of the interests concerned, it is not 

 creditable to the country that Ministers can do so little, 

 and that Parliaments, busy with questions of party 

 politics, can do still less, for the advancement of the 

 greatest of our national industries. 



There is the less reason why the Government, or why 

 Parliament, should hesitate to take action along these 



