APPENDIX VI 



A NEW LAND POLICY ^ 

 (A speech by a Cabinet Minister during the zvar) 



PLEA FOR A REVOLUTION 



LORD SELEORNE, President of the Board of Agri- 

 culture, speaking at the first of a series of lectures by 

 Mr. Christopher Turnor, at the London School of 

 Economics, on " The Land and the Empire," said that after 

 the war the whole attitude of Parliament towards agriculture 

 would have to be changed. The land question must be con- 

 sidered solely from the point of view of the security of the 

 nation and national defence. 



In the course of his speech Lord Selborne said that when 

 the Anti-Corn Law League was a great political institution 

 the Tories, headed by Mr. Disraeli, prophesied that Free 

 Trade would be the ruin of agriculture. Mr. Cobden and 

 Mr. Bright always denied that statement. For more than a 

 generation they were absolutely right ; but it was no exag- 

 geration to say that in 1880 a catastrophe fell upon British 

 agriculture. From 1880 to 1900 was a time of dire distress 

 for all connected with the cultivation of the soil. Our political 

 economists had not studied that period carefully enough. 

 Thousands of farmers were absolutely ruined during it. The 

 8cr\ices of the landowner during that period had not been 

 anything like properly acknowledged, because, had it not 

 been for the landowner, the agricultural depression would 



» Times Kcport, March 11, 1916. 

 239 



