OTHER SCHEMES OF LAND REFORM 283 



by quoting- the weighty words of one who was among 

 the ablest members of the diplomatic service, whose 

 exhaustive and masterly reports on the Land Tenure 

 of Germany have been the source of the information 

 used by many who have written on the subject : 

 "The maintenance of agriculture," he writes, "must 

 ever be the solicitude of the statesmen, even of an 

 industrial country like England. Moreover, there are 

 not wanting signs, looming it might be on the far 

 horizon, that two great dangers are menacing England. 

 The one is the disproportionate unlanded or unpro- 

 pertied class. The statesman who shall pass measures 

 for removing that disproportion will indeed deserve 

 well of his country. The other is a possible decline 

 of manufacturing industry. If the possibility should 

 assume the portentous shape of a probability, the 

 statesman who shall pass measures to facilitate and 

 provide for the transfer to agriculture of any capital 

 which may be liberated from manufactures will indeed 

 deserve well of his country. The names of such 

 statesmen, and of him, too, who shall content the 

 discontented cultivators of Ireland, will be handed 

 down to posterity as household words and will be 

 passed from generation to generation with, if it be pos- 

 sible, a yet greater renown and yet greater national 

 gratitude, than the renown and gratitude with which 

 the names of Stein and Hardenberg are being passed 

 from generation to generation, as household words of 

 the great Prussian people." ^ 



^ The late J. P. Harris-Gastrell, Secretary to the British Embassy 

 Berlin. 



