208 OUR ENGLISH LAND MUDDLE. 



wheat to make things better for the farmer. 

 That natural increase is going to continue. 

 Put on a tariff now and the tariff will be blamed 

 for the increase, and we will have another period 

 of unsettlement. It would be better to let 

 things be. Farming can be made to pay now 

 if the landowner knows his business. In too 

 many cases he leaves everything to an agent, 

 and does not give his attention to landowning 

 as he would to any great commercial under- 

 taking into which he had put the same amount 

 of money." 



That view was opposed altogether to the 

 general view. It smacks a little, to my mind, of 

 the complacent advice given in books on " Self- 

 help " by men who began as errand boys and 

 finished up as millionaires, and tell all errand 

 boys to go and do likewise. With the aid of 

 his special qualities this Cambridgeshire gentle- 

 man can make agricultural landowning pay 

 under Free Trade conditions. But the weight 

 of evidence is that to the average man this is 

 not generally possible. All the other landowners 

 with practical knowledge of farming conditions 

 whom I asked regarded " some tariff protection 



35 



