174 THE AGRICULTURAL CLUB. 



his rights of property without some limitation. This is the 

 condition of living in a community under an organised 

 system of society. The principle applies in a special sense 

 to agricultural land. It will be readily admitted by taking 

 an extreme hypothesis. Supposing all the owners of land 

 suitable for Agriculture were to agree that they would no 

 longer allow crops to be grown or stock to be kept that it 

 should all revert to a state of nature. Obviously the nation 

 could not and would not allow it the maintenance of 

 Agriculture in one form or another being essential to the 

 continued existence and well-being of the community. 

 But if it be granted that the nation could not allow all to do 

 this, on what logical principle can one claim to do it ? It 

 is clear, therefore, that the right to do what one likes with 

 one's own does not really exist in the case of agricultural 

 land and that the State is justified in imposing conditions 

 upon its ownership. 



The principle upon which the State has dealt with owners 

 of agricultural land in recent times if there can be said to 

 have been a principle has been unsound. It has made no 

 attempt to interpose when an owner has deliberately wasted 

 or left unproductive for his own selfish ends the resources 

 of national wealth which he possessed, but it has heaped 

 burdens of taxation on all landowners alike upon the just 

 and the unjust which have prevented them from carrying 

 out their proper duties and discharging the obligations of 

 their position. Pressure upon landlords has converged 

 from two sides, and in neither case has it been for the national 

 advantage. On the one hand, the State has taken so large a 

 proportion of the rental that the margin left has been 

 inadequate to provide for the maintenance of the equipment 

 of the farms or for the improvements necessary to keep pace 

 with the needs of progressive tenants, while on the other 

 hand, the statutory liabilities of the landlord to his tenants 

 have been made more onerous and his powers of replacing 

 indifferent occupiers of the land by others more capable 

 have been curtailed. 



The interest of the nation is greater than that of in- 

 dividuals, and its paramount interest is the maintenance of 



