412 THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



bill will be worth more than at the time of its drawing when 

 part of the maturing time has run. The money comes 

 back to the spender. In our case it does not. 



There are other causes still. More than once have I 

 asked in the country — more particularly in my whilom 

 county of Sussex — why such or such a patch of land fully 

 capable of cultivation was left uncultivated. " We began 

 digging it up and sowing or planting things ; but at once 

 the rate collector " — I think there were several other harpies 

 of the same clan, the kind that the late Lord Salisbury 

 on a memorable occasion in the House of Lords branded 

 as " nuisances " — " came down upon us. Cultivation would 

 not in the first stages have been worth the outgoings. So 

 we gave up." In the grandduchy of Oldenburg, in which 

 very careful attention is paid to land reclamation, more 

 particularly of moor and marsh, and where land settlement 

 is systematically encouraged, settlers reclaiming waste land 

 are allowed ten years' exemption from rates and taxes, 

 besides a certain period of freedom from rent, if the land be 

 the property of the State. Under such conditions reclama- 

 tion advances apace, to the benefit of the country, which 

 becomes the richer by it. Similar privileges are accorded 

 in other countries, not of the European Continent only, 

 although the measure of exemption may be less — for instance 

 in Italy, but also in Prussia. Where so great a benefit is 

 to be secured for the Nation, cannot we too sacrifice a few 

 years' rates and taxes ? As they say in Yorkshire, there is 

 " nowt for nowt." And it is just from the smaller men, 

 whose purses are small too — though they may have abundant 

 fruit-bearing efforts in their bodies — that we may expect 

 most in the matter of reclamation. 



It we look abroad we find a different state of things 

 altogether from what obtains among ourselves. In France 

 — apart from some wastes on large estates which take up 

 proportionally little space on the map — you see every square 

 foot of available territory turned to account. The meticu- 

 lous care of French husbandmen for little plots that they 

 can even only create by carrying the soil up laboriously on 

 their backs in their hottes, hundreds of feet of steep climbing 



