THE SONS OF TOIL. 165 



Those are the necessary conditions of public controversy, 

 and they are also the essential conditions of national progress. 

 A free constitution can only work efficiently human nature 

 being what it is under a party system. All members of a 

 free community except a few fanatical theorists desire the 

 general good of the community, though they may differ 

 widely as to the means of attaining that object. To assume 

 that the welfare of the nation is a monopoly of any one group 

 of men, or that it provides in any sense a basis of political 

 action, is fallacious. It is the principle common to all 

 parties, however widely they may differ in its application. 



This applies to the agricultural community, and the 

 discussions at the agricultural Club illustrated it. The 

 prosperity of British Agriculture was the aim of all. The 

 proposals to achieve this end made by some appeared wholly 

 unreasonable or impracticable to others, but they were 

 put forward in good faith as means of attaining the goal 

 of common aspiration. 



It will be noticed that I have distinguished the sayings of 

 agricultural labourers from those of workers' representatives, 

 but the distinction is somewhat arbitrary. Among the 

 former I have included those who have spent their lives, or 

 the greater part of them, as actual farm workers, some of 

 them being still employed as wage-earners, while others, 

 after long years as wage-earners, have now become small 

 holders working only occasionally for wages. The workers' 

 representatives include those who were not and had not been, 

 since their early youth at any rate, actually employed in 

 Agriculture. Most indeed I believe all of them were born 

 and bred on the land, the sons of agricultural labourers, and 

 had a personal knowledge of country life and, generally 

 speaking, had acquired a knowledge of the economic side of 

 Agriculture quite as great, and often greater, than that of the 

 majority of those actually engaged in it. 



Nothing perhaps has done more to prejudice farmers in the 

 opinion of the public than the objections raised by some of 

 them to discussing questions of wages and conditions of 

 employment with the chosen representatives of the men on 

 the ground that they were not personally engaged in the 



