A FULL REWARD FOR THE TILLER. .\oj 



gence and outlay. We talk much of " commercialising " 

 and " industrialising " Agriculture. That calling in sooth 

 needs such treatment badly. But if it could be placed on 

 a full par with Commerce and Industry, undoubtedly the 

 same skill, inventiveness, energy and outlay in capital, 

 which have stimulated and marvellously developed the 

 rival, according to Aristotle inferior, calHngs, would be forth- 

 coming and raise it to the same high point of intensive prac- 

 tice and prosperity. To ensure successful business there 

 must be freedom of action and there must be a prospect of 

 a full return. The point here urged is not that the entire face 

 of the country should be changed by a wholesale creation 

 of " £2,ooo-a-year squire properties," any more than of 

 small holdings, nor that tenancies as well as large estates 

 should cease. It is, that the number of rungs composing 

 the " ladder " so currently spoken of should be increased 

 and completed. It is that Sir James Caird's demand should 

 be fulfilled and the landowners who do not possess the means 

 to fill the position which they occupy— who in truth, by 

 reason of their insufficiency of means and of interest, form 

 a heavy drag upon national Agriculture — should not be 

 drastically got rid of, but have a golden bridge built for 

 them, by which to retire gracefully, yielding their places 

 to others better equipped for the purpose. Occupying 

 ownership, supported as it would be by the aes alienum, 

 not, as heretofore, of the landlord, but of a mortgage institu- 

 tion, would not get rid altogether of tenancy holdings. Nor 

 is it desirable that it should do so. But it would set a new 

 tune to tenancy conditions, by showing what farming can 

 accomplish when freed from hampering restrictions and 

 enforced submission to personal fancies. It is likely that 

 it would create a new love for the land. It is certainly 

 probable that it would, by keeping owners on their land, 

 identifying them with practical Agriculture and associating 

 them closely with local country life, impart a new tone to 

 that life, such as in the more densely peopled English- 

 speaking countries people are now in search of — in the United 

 States since ]\Ir. Roosevelt as President appointed the 

 Country Life Commission, in Ireland since Sir Horace 



