90 THE AGRICULTURAL CLUB. 



profit of the individuals engaged in the cultivation of the 

 land is the only one, as Mr. Lennard pointed out, which 

 rests on an economic basis. 



If maximum production, regardless of maximum profit, 

 is aimed at, it is with the object of reducing the amount 

 of imported food supplies in the interest either of national 

 security or of national finance. 



The third object which an agricultural policy may be 

 primarily intended to secure is the employment of the 

 largest possible number of persons on the land in the interests 

 of racial vigour and political stability. 



Mr. Lennard dealt with what may be termed the 

 " maximum rural population " object, or, as he called it, 

 the " social argument " in an interesting manner. Pointing 

 out that a large agricultural population was advocated as 

 a desirable national asset because country life breeds men 

 of strong physique, and the sober slow-going ways of rustic 

 society provide a check upon " the heady impulses and 

 tempestuous fevers of urban democracy," he observed that 

 the experience of the war had thrown some doubt on this 

 argument. 



The records of the London and Manchester regiments alone 

 are sufficient to prove that town-life does not necessarily involve 

 physical or moral decadence, for the clerks and artisans of those 

 two cities have shown themselves worthy of the best traditions 

 of the race both by their endurance in the trenches and their 

 valour upon the field of battle. The spectacle of Russian anarchy, 

 again, hardly encourages the belief that rural life makes for sober 

 political judgment, since Russia is a country which employs 

 some four-fifths of her population in husbandry. Besides, 

 there are other aspects of the social question which deserve 

 far more attention than they have hitherto received. It is 

 an essential condition of healthy social life that the two sexes 

 should be fairly evenly distributed throughout the country. 

 By those who believe in the beneficent influence of sexual selec- 

 tion the importance of this point will at once be acknowledged. 

 If there is a preponderance of males in certain districts, or even 

 if the preponderance of females is less in some districts than 

 in others, the tendency will be, not for the selected women 

 of the whole population to become the mothers of the next 

 generation, but for all or nearly all the women to be married in 

 those regions which are over-populated with males and for a 



