A FULL REWARD FOR THE TILLER. 373 



Midland county — who make a boast of it that they will 

 not have Dissenters. Now are these landlords — who are 

 after all in the occupation of their land in a sense trustees 

 under the Nation — really serving the Nation, which looks 

 to them for sufficient bread, well in giving it in the place 

 of such bread only a stone of supposed political or denomi- 

 national orthodoxy ? There are many other fancies, to 

 observe which is part of the contract. There are fields laid 

 out in the most inconvenient and uneconomical way, with 

 angles and corners and many bits of irregularly shaped 

 headland, whose fertility must run to waste. There are 

 hedgerows of quite unnecessary height, which look charm- 

 ing, but which eat up much fertility, cause much harmful 

 shade, shelter many injurious animals and breed much 

 vermin. However, wheat growing must on such properties 

 stand second to the landlord's fancy for high hedges. Sir 

 J. Caird instanced a case in which, on an estate of only 260 

 acres, a felling of hedge timber produced ;^3,500 — in his day 

 of cheaper prices. Tenants were " forbidden to touch the 

 hedges." There are other prohibitions and precepts, which 

 are sport to owners but a sad hindrance to tenants. Many 

 of us remember what the rabbit plague was before Sir 

 W. Harcourt carried his " Hares and Rabbits Act." Mr. 

 A. D. Hall speaks of one landlord in the Lake District who, 

 although potatoes grown on lea have been found the most 

 remunerative crop in his district, will only allow a very 

 limited area to be planted with them ; and of another, in 

 Kent, who forbids his tenants to let their poultry go upon 

 the stubbles, holding that the grain there dropped belongs 

 of right to his partridges — as under the Mosaic law gleanings 

 belonged to " the fatherless and widow." In the testing 

 hour of need we have had to aUow the shooting of foxes 

 and the thinning of herds of deer and flights of pheasants. 

 However, those animals were as detrimental to farming 

 before the war came on as they are now. The difference 

 is only that the war has brought the loss which they cause 

 vividly before our eyes and reminded us of the responsi- 

 bilities connected with landowning. 



However, there are many and many cases in which the 



