A FULL REWARD FOR THE TILLER. 377 



ployed such and such fertilisers or such and such feeding- 

 stuffs, ostensibly representing an improvement, but employed 

 them wrongly. Or he may have paid the money for them 

 honestly enough, but received inferior articles. The 

 fertilising constituents used may have been washed into 

 the subsoil. The animal manure, into which the residue 

 of fertilising constituents had passed, may have been 

 impoverished by bad handling. As a last point, arbitrators 

 are only human and therefore fallible. The whole subject 

 is beset with difficulties. And all this affects only the 

 strictly agricultural side of the question, as between landlord 

 and tenant. But there is a much wider field in which the 

 system unfortunately works damage. 



Public expressions of discontent with what exists accord- 

 ingly have taken different and more demonstrative shapes. 

 Apart from labourers' movements, which became violent 

 in Norfolk, and noisy in Sussex and Kent, we have had a 

 " land campaign," which is not unlikely to be repeated ; 

 we have had a boisterous demand for small holdings, to be 

 cut out of larger estates ; and the cry for " Land Nationali- 

 sation " has become louder and louder. Land Nationali- 

 sation, however undesirable it may be in itself, is, in truth, 

 the natural and logical outcome of the feudal land system 

 now still in operation, its direct and legitimate offspring 

 in these days of democratic institutions. For, so far as 

 possession goes, the prerogative of the ancient Crown has 

 virtually passed into the hands of the people, and if there 

 is a feudal overlord, under whose grant lesser lords may 

 hold the Nation's land, that overlord now is the people. 



It is not likely, all the same, that the demand for Nationali- 

 sation would have arisen if the old order of things had 

 properly served its purpose. But when the shoe begins to 

 pinch, we take to looking at its seams. The causes for 

 the cry have been the neglect of national interests for private. 

 And so long as such neglect continues, the cry is likely to 

 grow louder and louder, and to gain in backing. It is not 

 every one who will hold Land Nationalisation to constitute 

 the most desirable remedy. The practice of Agriculture 

 is so varied, according to locality, climate, markets and 



