REMEDIES SUGGESTED. 8 



J 



it, and endeavouring to divorce them more and more from 

 practical Agriculture, and deprive them of all voice in 

 agricultural business on their own land ? The demands 

 put forward on behalf of the tenant as the operating factor 

 in Agriculture are just enough in themselves. The farmer 

 wants to-day, not only those " more liberal covenants " 

 which Sir J. Caird demanded on his behalf nearly seventy 

 years ago as an essential condition to success, and w4iich 

 in all too many cases he has not yet had conceded to him, 

 but greater freedom still, or he wall never be able to develop 

 that " diversified " and " intensive " system of husbandry 

 for which not only American Secretaries of the Department 

 of Agriculture clamour, but which a w^ell-versed British 

 agriculturist like Mr. Hall likewise insists on. He wants 

 that security for money laid out in improvements which 

 in all too many cases he is still not certain to obtain. He 

 wants that security of tenure — whatever be the precise 

 form of his agreement. There is actual security under 

 yearly holdings — which enables him to take long views and 

 think years ahead. But, on the other hand, how is a modern 

 landlord to play the " Coke of Norfolk," to place himself 

 at the head of a movement which threatens to leave him 

 with less and less hold upon his own land and upon its 

 employment, while the tendency of the time, steadily 

 pushed forward, is, to reduce him to the position of a mere 

 rent-charger — with the sword of Damocles of a long bill 

 for compensation for changes — in the execution of w^hich he 

 is not even to be allowed to have a voice, and executed in 

 a form which he may absolutely condemn — ^perpetually 

 danghng over him ; w^hile the spectre of Land Nationalisa- 

 tion, which to him means confiscation, keeps grinning at 

 him over the wall ? It is not altogether reasonable to 

 expect that. Our heart — so we know on the best authority 

 — is there where our treasure happens to be. A Coke of 

 Norfolk, a Somerville, a Townshend, could " take the 

 lead," because the improvement of their land was their 

 own work, from which they were sure personally to reap 

 the benefit. We reckon it a national benefit that Coke 

 within forty years nearly decupled his rent roll. That 



