496 THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



political, a prospect of agricultural revival before us such 

 as no other country can surpass. The practical sense, which, 

 as an element of value for successful business, excels all 

 other favouring conditions, is in us probably in greater force 

 than in any of our Continental neighbours. It is national 

 inertia, a disposition to be satisfied with what is — heightened 

 rather than mitigated by our national proneness to grum- 

 bling—and a disinclination to accept anything that is new, 

 that stands in the way of progress. That wants, under the 

 influence of a National Agricultural Policy, in which all 

 interests concerned must join together, to be overcome by 

 will power. We have excellent men at work, excellent 

 material for them to work upon. What we stand in need of 

 is a cement to bring the two into closer contact and bind 

 them to one another, so as to enable the good to make their 

 influence effectively felt upon the backward and carry them 

 away by their example. Please God, such cement will be 

 found. We are not setting out for a new position to con- 

 quer. All that we need to do is, under altered circum- 

 stances, to which due consideration will have to be paid, to 

 recover a position which we held easily fifty and sixty years 

 ago, and thus to make the United Kingdom once more the 

 world's leader in Agriculture, and to make it provide for the 

 Nation that which the Nation needs and rightly asks for : 

 A maximum agricultural output in time of peace, and a 

 fuUy assured supply of foodstuffs in time of war, from a 

 broad acreage nursed up to good " heart " by the cultivation 

 of remunerative crops, congenial to our climate, serving as 

 an incomparable preparation for a plentiful growth of corn, 

 when the time of trial comes, enabling us to rely with confi- 

 dence upon our own production of it. 



