CHAPTER XXIII 



CONCLUSION 



Land Reform is a hackneyed subject. Legislative 

 and other attempts to deal with it have been, as a 

 rule, attempts to graft improvements on the present 

 system of landlord and tenant with a view to better 

 the condition of the agriculturists as a class ; conse- 

 quently they have had little or no interest for the 

 public at large. In these pages the subject has been 

 treated, however imperfectly, as a national one, with 

 the object of bringing home to the minds of all 

 members of the community, whatever their position 

 and whatever their occupation, the fact that they have 

 a living interest in agriculture, and that their happiness 

 and well-being depend upon it. The farmer is put in 

 a secondary place, and regarded only as a necessary 

 agent through which the general welfare is to be 

 secured. Agriculture (in its widest sense) is held up 

 as the parent industry of the world, of which trade and 

 commerce are but the offspring and handmaids.^ 



The ancients regarded that industry as the basis of 

 civilization. They had their goddesses of agriculture, 

 to whom temples were built and splendid offerings 

 made. Our harvest thanksgivings, feasts, and other 

 rural festivals, so real even up to recent times, were 



^ "The Earth, which having a divine and everlasting youth bestowed 

 upon it, is called the common patent of all things." ("Husbandry," 

 Columella, Book i.) 



" The land is mother of us all ; nourishes, shelters, gladdens, lovingly 

 enriches us all." (Carlyle.) 



394 



