REMEDIES SUGGESTED. 85 



Once more, it is different in Ireland. We have landlords 

 there who do trouble — agriculturally — about their estates, 

 and who do take the lead in agricultural organisation and 

 progress. And we can trace the benefit resulting from this 

 in Foyiies and Randlestown. 



And the landlords' agents would not be in a position to 

 help their " clients " much. For they are for the most part 

 themselves not agriculturists at all, but surveyors, it may 

 be soUcitors, often enough auctioneers, in other words ex 

 hypothesi men well versed in a very valuable part of estate 

 management — though even that does not hold good in all 

 cases — but not agriculturists in the full sense of the term. 

 They may be full of genuine interest in Agriculture. But 

 they are not of the caste itself, not men du metier. And 

 of all people in the world farmers are the least disposed 

 to place confidence in men whom they do not know as 

 good practitioners in their own craft. 



Lord Beaconsfield's second " living " is that of the tenant. 

 Now here we touch the core of the matter. Agriculture 

 is the work of the tenant. The landlord may help him or 

 he may hinder him. He more generally now does the latter, 

 because for his own security he feels compelled to set limits 

 to the tenant's freedom of action and reserves to himself 

 a veto on his enterprise. It is the tenant who tills, the 

 tenant who manures, the tenant who sows, the tenant who 

 makes good or bad Agriculture. Now one would like 

 to ask, under our present system, what security has the 

 Nation, on whose behalf the soil is tilled, or has in fact 

 any one, that the tenant selected to work the soil will be 

 capable and equal to his task, and that his farming will be 

 of the kind that can be approved ? We cannot of course 

 ask that the tenant should be made to pass a qualifying 

 examination, or secure a diploma of fitness ; nor would such 

 test of capability, if it could be enforced, afford any guarantee 

 for the attainment of the desired end, even in the smallest 

 degree. But what do we actually do in the matter ? The 

 tenant is, if not selected — for there are times when there 

 are too few offering for selection to be practicable — but at 

 any rate accepted and installed by the landlord. Such 



