138 APPENDIX 



farmed the land himself and farmed it unsuccessfully, 

 but he kept the land in cultivation and the labourers 

 employed. The result to him was the loss of half the 

 capital the family had previously possessed. Another 

 result was that brains and money were no longer 

 attracted to farming. A change also took place in the 

 ownership of land. Land again became a luxury for 

 the rich and that was a great misfortune for the country. 

 These national calamities, land that ought to be 

 cultivated lying uncultivated and the over-production 

 of game, were not causes but effects. They were the 

 result of the fact that land was owned by men who did 

 not care what it produced, who had bought it for 

 amusement, just as in the old days it was bought for 

 political power. 



THE FUTURE 



We had all learnt much from the war. We had learnt 

 the immense strength which was gained by a country 

 if it could feed its own people. We had learnt the great 

 value of a rural population. We had learnt the anxieties 

 that were caused to a nation at war which had to im- 

 port a large proportion of essential products from over- 

 seas during the war. Please God, this country should 

 never have to undergo that experience again. But to 

 secure that end we must so frame all our agricultural 

 laws as to obtain the greatest possible national security. 



I think (Lord Selborne went on) there ought to he 

 nothing less than a revolution. We want to see the greatest 

 possible number living on the land. We want to see 

 the agricultural labourer assured of a good wage, a good 

 house, and a good garden. More than that, we want to 

 see him assured of the prospect of becoming a cultivator 

 of the land himself and eventually an owner. We 

 want, in fact, an agricultural ladder which will enable a 

 man to rise on the land just as he can rise in any other 

 walk of life. Then we want the farmer to be other 

 than a man who chooses farming because he likes its 



