488 THE FUTURE OE OUR AGRICULTURE. 



case, being rendered more saleable, land would be more 

 likely to come freely into the market, and, with suitable 

 credit facilities provided, both for mortgaging and for work- 

 ing purposes, we might expect to see the " tendency " which 

 Mr. Prothero has recently noticed, for tenants to buy their 

 holdings — which already showed itself, on the whole benefi- 

 cently, a little more than a century ago^ — gaining in force, 

 and so the way planed for that unification of interests in the 

 same holding, in the place of present dualism, which would 

 promise to secure to the tiller the full reward for his labour, 

 his skill and his outlay, in grist or in meal, in annual income 

 or in disposable capital value. 



If that were to come about, the question of placing the 

 land under skilled cultivators, instead of under the unskilled 

 majority of the present day, to whom Mr. Hall has assigned 

 the doom of being " shaken out," would necessarily settle 

 itself. For there would be no more patronage, no more 

 respect for side considerations, in the selection of tenants ; 

 there could be no more question as to the political sides or 

 religious opinions, there could also be no trusting to remis- 

 sions of rent held in reserve, supposing that things were to 

 go badly. Every occupier would farm according to his own 

 free will, but also subject to his own risk. Now risk is a 

 most effective sifter of persons. A man would not take his 

 farm because " father " had done so, and he himself was 

 used to bullocks and the plough. But he would carefully 

 ask himself : Have I the skill, have I the experience, have 

 I the money to embark on a venture which may, under good 

 handling, gain me a fortune, but must, under bad, inevitably 

 mean ruin ? Under such rule we might trust to see our 

 land well cultivated. 



Our desiderata, then, are these : Above all things Educa- 

 tion, extended and made appropriate ; next Organisation ; 

 facilities for assured Credit ; appropriate regulation of the 

 question of Labour, ushering in a better era for the labourer ; 

 facilitated access to the land for small cultivators ; utilisa- 

 tion, in suitable ways, of land now lying idle ; and arrange- 

 ments with regard to landed property benefiting the land- 

 owner and opening the way to a unification of interest, so 



