REMEDIES SUGGESTED. 91 



to its task, and that more drastic methods deriving their 

 motive power from a broader and more popular stratum are 

 called for. We see this tendency of opinion pointedly 

 expressed in the suggestion put forward— among many 

 others, as already remarked— that the Community, that is, 

 the State, should take, not the brewing industry alone, nor 

 the trade in corn, in potatoes, in wool, alone, but the impor- 

 tant practice of Agriculture as a whole out of the hands of 

 private adventurers and manage, as well as own, our 

 national acres for itself. That is manifestl}^ as invariably 

 happens in such cases, overshooting the mark. A wealthy 

 body like the Co-operative Wholesale Society, disposing of 

 millions and having a market with more than three millions 

 of " well-to-do artisans," as the late J. C. Gray has described 

 them, at their back, may do great things in the farming 

 of tens of thousands of acres — be it remembered, for its 

 own supply. Its farming is still, on a greatly enlarged scale, 

 the husbandry only of the self-contained landowner of the old 

 Roman age, catering with his fundus instmctus for himself 

 and his household alone. The idea of course is, that the 

 whole Nation is to be gathered together into this co-operative 

 commonwealth, directed by one central authority. How- 

 ever that is not National Agriculture. You could not 

 press the Agriculture of the entire Nation into so narrow a 

 frame. The conceivers of the idea overlook, in their keen- 

 ness for one laudable interest and ideal, that there are 

 other interests and ideals, of as great importance, conflicting 

 with it and forming important obstacles to be reckoned with. 

 The fact that not only have our landowners, as Mr. Hall 

 explains, as a class failed to make management of their 

 own land by paid servants a success — which seems to 

 indicate a sad falling off since the days of " Coke of Nor- 

 folk," and shows our landlords at a disadvantage in compari- 

 son with the French, many of whom make their faire valoir 

 pay very respectably, as do also German landowners — 

 but that countries much better endowed than ours with 

 Crown lands, have long since found it greatly to their advan- 

 tage to farm such out — except public forests and land 

 attached to public studs — rather than manage them them- 



