104 THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



ment of respect, to better social and economic conditions, 

 to political power and distinction. 



Our rural educational arrangements compare badly indeed 

 with those of our neighbours all round. And even our 

 system of purely technical agricultural education shows a 

 want of breadth, of diffusiveness and of the power of per- 

 meation. 



Such want is, of course, attributable to special causes 

 which do not exist elsewhere, but which are among ourselves 

 not by any means hopelessly irremovable. In Germany, 

 whose system our authorities appear to be bent upon 

 following, the agricultural population are on the whole more 

 favourably situated. The large number of their " squires " 

 — owning properties generally of considerably smaller 

 extent than those of our average landlords — supplies highest 

 agricultural education with a crowd of willing students, 

 who see nothing derogatory in the study of " clodhopping," 

 but rather carrying their heads high as constituting a 

 privileged, powerful class, whose position makes Agriculture 

 a fashionable study, equal in prestige to any pursued at a 

 University. And the even larger number of those who aim 

 at making a living out of Agriculture as superior employes 

 — " under-managers," Mr. Middleton calls them— with a 

 tenancy or well remunerated place as what we should call 

 " agent " for some very large landlord, a Prince or Duke, 

 or else a small property of their own, in prospect — some 

 also on the look out for land-owning partners for life — 

 greatly swells the ranks of those who gladly flock to agri- 

 cultural colleges or Agricultural Departments of Universi- 

 ties, there to acquire knowledge more varied than that 

 which we ourselves are contented with at similar institutions, 

 owing to the many industrial developments attached to 

 Agriculture in Germany. Such knowledge in their position 

 they have power, and indeed can scarcely fail, to impart, 

 almost automatically, to a much wider circle of rural deni- 

 zens — in the very same way that Mr. Robertson-Scott 

 has told us that Dutch farmers of a higher station impart 

 it to their humbler neighbours, with whom they mix and 

 discuss things freely. On the other hand, the division of 



