Introduction 



This new attitude of the public mind is 

 calculated to ensure a fair hearing to those who 

 are anxious to urge the needs and the claims 

 of agriculture. Hitherto they have often found 

 themselves preaching to deaf ears, but now 

 they can count on a large measure of sym- 

 pathetic attention. The gospel of rural life, 

 as preached, for instance, by Sir Horace Plunkett 

 in his brilliant essay on the Rural Life Problem 

 in America, has an interest and an attraction for 

 English readers which it would certainly not have 

 had twenty years ago. And so I venture to 

 think that the present book, which deals from a 

 different point of view with the same absorbing 

 problem, is timely in its publication. I am not 

 concerned to endorse all the opinions of the 

 writer. But I feel the greatest sympathy with 

 his main object and with the spirit of his enquiry. 

 He is a landowner who combines with a practi- 

 cal knowledge of agriculture a high sense of the 

 duties of his position, and, what is perhaps more 

 uncommon, a keen sympathy with the farmer 

 and the labourer. He realises the solidarity of 

 interest between men of all classes who live on 

 and by the land, and his aim is to point out 

 what they collectively owe to the country, and 

 what consideration is due to them in return. 

 If I am right in thinking that the subject, with 

 which he deals, occupies, as it certainly deserves, 



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