366 THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



Time has in one sense been less considerate to our land- 

 lords. However, being, up to some time ago, generally 

 better blessed with funds, and in possession of larger 

 demesnes than their Continental classmates, there has been 

 a greater halo about their position and much greater tena- 

 city in their retention of their land. And the land by 

 which they have held fast they have known how to turn 

 to account in certain ways. Our laws, being for the most 

 part based upon respect for property, have scrupulously 

 — perhaps over-scrupulously — protected their rights in 

 every respect. In this way modern tenancy has grown 

 up with all its rigid reservations, with its covenants, its 

 landlord's distress, and all its other restraints upon free 

 action, which harassing conditions are to a very large extent 

 indeed responsible for the much-complained-of, routine- 

 bound backwardness and dullness of our " average " farmer, 

 who enters upon his tenure with his hands tied and has 

 little scope for initiative left to him for striking out new 

 paths, on which the benefit of the land to the Nation might 

 be better consulted. Under such conditions it requires 

 exceptional alertness of mind, and knowledge of what is 

 being done elsewhere, to depart from the beaten track of 

 rule-of-thumb husbandry. Mr. Prothero rightly insists 

 that, on farming becoming a business, there must be " free 

 action." Meanwhile time and democratic institutions have 

 made serious inroads upon landlords' social preserves. The 

 possession of land is no longer, as it was in past centuries, 

 a matter of descent, but of cash. It is " Cash rules the 

 grove," as Byron sang. Accordingly the ranks of landlords 

 have been invaded by newcomers, many of whom have 

 claimed the privileges so eagerly sought, without recognising 

 the accompanying responsibilities. Hence the particular 

 landlords, whom Mr. A. D. Hall chides for " not taking the 

 lead " in the agricultural movement. Their heart is else- 

 where than in the land, as a workshop for Agriculture. 

 Tenacious holding fast by the land, as encumbrances grow 

 up like gourds of Jonah's type, has at the same time eaten 

 fatally into whilom superior wealth, which appeared to 

 entitle landlords to their exacting overlordship — ^at the 



