The Moral of this Narrative. 531 



The Farmer's Produce Supply Association is therefore to be 

 encouraged. 



So far every remedy suggested is one that commends itself 

 to all the three classes connected with the land. Unfortun- 

 ately the farming section, in their despair, have already begun 

 to drift apart from their original and natural allies, and to 

 formulate a policy for themselves. This is only one step 

 onward in that ruinous course, the disasters of which our 

 History has often rendered patent. The physicist tells as that 

 on occasions the force of cohesion can be overpowered by that 

 of adhesion, and this agency of disintegration has always been 

 employed by the enemies of the landed interest whenever they 

 meant to do it some mischief. Instead of the farmer forming 

 a connecting link between the capitalist-landlord and wage- 

 earning labourer, he has been forced into an isolated position 

 antagonistic to both. 



As soon as the traditional policy of the protector and 

 protected became weakened, a re-approachment of interests 

 should have been fostered by the fresh economy of the co- 

 operative system, in which the farmer becomes an obvious 

 rallying point wherever the interests either of labour or capital 

 are menaced with interference from without. 



The joint stock principle was a feature of the feudal polity, 

 and it only died out in this country when the earlier husband- 

 men acquired proprietary rights over their tenancies. It has 

 never died out in France, but exists under the metayer system 

 up to the present day. 



Rent is, or should be, the overplus of the farmer's profits 

 paj'able to the landlord after he has repaid himself the costs of 

 cultivation, livelihood, and usual business interest on the capital 

 employed. To rate this sum according to the area of land 

 tenanted is not therefore logical. Rather should it have some 

 relationship to the market prices of its produce. The metayer 

 system fixes the landlord's remuneration at half the annual 

 profits of the tenant. In this economy the proprietor of the 

 land takes the former's place as capitalist, and the latter be- 

 comes the labourer. Both parties would seem to have a strong 

 incentive to develop to the utmost the profits of their com- 



