TENANT-RIGHT AND THE THREE F'S. 201 



fair rent, what good would be done by his decision to 

 bad tenants ? They are sure to fail sooner or later. 

 But, to decide what is a fair rent, it must first be 

 decided what is the fair price of corn, and mutton, 

 and beef, and pork, and butter, and all other agri- 

 cultural products which vary every year ; and after 

 a fair price for these has been fixed, no progress has 

 been made till it has been decided what will be the 

 demand and supply of these things for the next 

 thirty-one years. And there are half a dozen other 

 questions, equally hard to answer, that must be 

 settled before an honest decision can be given. 



The truth is, there is no fair value of land ; the 

 value varies in England, in Scotland, everywhere, 

 with the skill, the industry of the farmer, with the 

 climate, with the prices of particular sorts of pro- 

 duce, and the cost of production, just like the price 

 of other kinds of goods. The true point is, what 

 profit can the farmer make by the land ? That is 

 all that matters. Acts of Parliament cannot regu- 

 late prices nor values ; neither can arbitrations, 

 which are at best only lawsuits. Shades of departed 

 free-traders and anti- corn -law leaguers! what are 

 your former colleagues and successors coming to ? 

 They think they can direct by Act of Parliament how 

 the businesses of landowning and farming shall be 

 carried on, and by the same means regulate the 

 price of the chief raw material of those businesses, 

 viz. land. To a man who began life nearly seventy 



