ENGLISH LAND CULTIVATION. 63 



" slump " again to the old extent. British 

 agriculture, it seems to me, could now, under 

 a wise policy, take new heart, and establish 

 itself once again as an economic industry, and 

 could stretch out its arms to reclaim for cultiva- 

 tion fields which have not known the plough 

 for many years. And this should be made the 

 basic fact in consideration of the British agri- 

 cultural position : that it is not a question of 

 taking desperate and expensive measures to keep 

 alive a moribund and doomed patient, but of 

 sound and moderate statesmanship to remove 

 a burden here, to give a buttress there, and 

 generally to undertake with hope a task of 

 restoration. 



A great deal of skill and patience, a great 

 deal of co-operation between all interests (a 

 co-operation difficult of attainment), is needed. 

 It is only the quack who has a really simple cure- 

 all for the troubles of the land — a simple pill 

 that will regenerate rural England in a fort- 

 night. All that is necessary is ' to give the 

 land to the people," and let the man who is 

 too inept to make a livelihood as a dock labourer 

 flourish as a farmer ; or to tax the land heavily 



