462 THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



for each interest concerned, incidental to dualism, that all 

 that noxious crop of abuses and unwholesome excrescences 

 has sprung, which our inquiring Committees have discovered 

 and complain of — deficient education, slovenly farming, 

 systematic exhaustion of the land, bad forestry, restricting 

 covenants, above all things that callous indifference of the 

 really operative factor in the practice of Agriculture, the 

 tenant class, to the science and good practice of their 

 calling. On they move in their torpid, two-centuries- ago 

 way, like animals in a gear, treading over and over again 

 the old beaten track, as if they had blinkers over their eyes 

 and nothing to do but machine- like plodding on. 



Under this misuse of the elements of Agriculture it is every 

 interest concerned which suffers. The landlord fails- — as 

 we have testimony to show — to receive the full return 

 which his land might yield. The farmer keeps backward 

 and makes less money than he should. The labourer 

 suffers from the fault}/ handling of their several interests 

 by the classes above him, and is kept landless, prospectless, 

 degraded and dependent. Above all things, the Nation, 

 whose interest must be recognised as paramount and 

 supreme, suffers really a serious loss, the reckoning up of 

 which would yield astonishing figures. 



The root of all this evil unfortunately lies so deep down, 

 under a soil grown stubborn and half petrified with long 

 neglect, that it is not easy to reac h, not very well possible to 

 reach till after some time — and at such period only, supposing 

 that those interested — that is, the classes directly concerned 

 and the Nation, whose collective interest must necessarily 

 override all other considerations — will pull together to reach 

 and remove it. However, the reaching of such root-cause 

 will have to be kept persistently in sight. For we know 

 that a tree with a bad root cannot bring forth good fruit. 

 And to have good fruit is essential for the Nation. There- 

 fore it is at the root that improvement wants to be effected. 



Meanwhile, while such work is in progress, the noisome 

 shoots which have sprung up from the poisoned Upas root 

 now occupying the soil will have to be tackled one by one 

 and clipped away. 



