390 THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



the tax upon the pockets of these men will prove excessive. 

 Once we have " rural credits," rendered easy and sufficiently 

 ample, such may well take the place of the landlord's 

 " cheap " tendering of his land which is now made such a 

 point of. It will be immaterial to the farmer's pocket 

 whether he pays toll in the shape of rent or of interest. 

 But having " rural credit " at his command, he will be a 

 gainer by the acquisition of freedom, independence, and 

 security of a return. 



Both difficulties referred to spring, in effect, from the 

 same cause. It is the costliness and trouble of proving full 

 possession of a particular piece of land, so as to make it 

 readily transferable and pledgable, which stands in the 

 way. Where such proof is made easy and cheap, land 

 changes hands readily. That is what obtains abroad, 

 where " rural credits " flourish. Land becomes spht up 

 according to the demand of the market, and changes 

 hands without difficulty. 



We must not — as Sir G. Cornwall Lewis has shown that 

 we are habitually only too prone to do — judge of institutions 

 by the abuses to which, like everything else in this imperfect 

 world, they may conceivably give rise. Much less are we 

 justified in judging them by abuses which are only imaginary. 

 When ready transferableness — which John Bright held up 

 as a most valuable desideratum — and ready divisibility 

 of land come to be spoken of, we instinctively recall to 

 mind all the bad things that have been said, on the one 

 hand, about excessive subdivision of land in France, and 

 of supposed excessive indebtedness of land in Germany. 

 Neither matter, as it happens, has anything to do with the 

 institution here about to be pleaded for, which is, as a first 

 step, Land Registration. For, in the first place, France 

 has no registration of title of land, although very shortly 

 before the outbreak of the war she decided to set us the 

 good example by introducing such, by reason of the great 

 advantages which it secures. And one direct consequence 

 of the absence of such register — very painfully felt for a 

 long time, similarly as in our own case — was, that there was 

 no readily obtainable mortgage credit available for small 



