378 THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



personal ability ; the work of every one who devotes him- 

 self to it requires so much of the personal impulse, if the 

 best results are to be obtained, that one would judge that 

 individualism is the proper regime. However, every one 

 recognises that in the Nation's interest the land must be 

 made to yield its proper increase. And if one master 

 will not make it do so, it may be advisable to pass the pro- 

 perty on to another. Therefore in their own interest present 

 landlords will be doing wisely to consult the Nation's wants, 

 instead of insisting to an extreme point on the absolute 

 rights of " property." After the war, with its necessities 

 and its shortages, to let in the searchlight on the rights 

 of the national demand for food production, the old pro- 

 testing cry of " property, property, property," is not likely 

 to avail much longer. 



Keen observers of cause and effect, and analysers of 

 operative forces, have long since detected the spot on which 

 the shoe has pinched, and formed a judgment as to the 

 proper means of removing the squeeze. Thus, something 

 like sixty years ago, the once well-known " S. G. O." of 

 the Times, Lord Sydney Godolphin Osborne, careful student 

 of social questions that he was, denounced the practised 

 " hoarding " of land which, by reason of the mass of property 

 in land lumped together in few hands, necessarily estranges 

 the owner from practical Agriculture and creates at least 

 two conflicting interests — under the conflict of which there 

 must be loss. As a remedy he advocated that properties 

 should be reduced in area, so that the owner should become 

 personally interested in the management of an estate which 

 he could overlook and in which — preferably farming it 

 for himself — he could take a direct interest. " S. G. 0." 

 accordingly pleaded, in England, for " £2,ooo-a-year squires 

 m Ireland for ";^i,ooo-a-year," Such men, he argued, 

 would be able to manage their own properties and accord- 

 ingly to answer to the Nation for their management. They 

 would become, from mere agricultural " grandees " — like 

 Captain Marryat's " fine gentlemen " captains of vessels — 

 working agriculturists, with an object to serve in thoroughly 

 stud5dng their business, acquainting themselves with all 



