AN AGRICULTURAL PARTY 345 



AGRICULTURAL REPRESENTATION COMMITTEE. 



APRIL, 1908. 



1. At the Council meeting on llth December the following 

 resolution was carried with four dissentients, and the Special 

 Committee was appointed : 



>; That in the opinion of this Council an Independent 

 Agricultural Parliamentary Party should be formed, and 

 other steps taken to strengthen the representation of agri- 

 culture in Parliament, and that with this object in view 

 immediate steps should be taken to appoint a Committee 

 to consider the matter and report to the Council." 

 2. Your Committee felt that their inquiries should follow 

 the lines suggested by the report of the Organisation Committee 

 adopted on 5th November last, since that report met with such 

 warm approval by the local Chambers. 



3 The proposal to form an Independent Agricultural Party 

 has, naturally, attracted a good deal of attention from the Press, 

 from politicians, and from other quarters, and the statements 

 made in the report just referred to have been subjected to much 

 criticism, friendly and otherwise. As was expected, the unfriendly 

 criticism came from strong party politicians, and this has, of 

 course, been reflected in the columns of those local papers whose 

 raison d'etre is the advocacy of certain political views. These 

 have, of course, been followed by those (who still exist, though 

 in greatly diminished numbers) who hold that blind obedience 

 to their party at all cost is the one redeeming virtue. On the 

 other hand, a considerable section of the Press, a large number 

 of individual agriculturists, and a few members of Parliament 

 have expressed warm approval of the formation of such a party. 

 4. The statement that " there were 150 constituencies in 

 which the voters were chiefly agricultural " has been called in 

 question ; but your Committee's inquiry shows that it was per- 

 fectly correct. They find, moreover, that in fully half of these 

 the agricultural vote so largely predominates that (other circum- 

 stances being favourable) there is no reason why agricultural 

 candidates should not be returned for that number of divisions. 

 Assuming for a moment that a group of candidates standing for 

 such divisions were returned as Independent Agricultural Mem- 

 bers, your . Committee wish to point out that this by no means 

 represents the limit of the voting strength upon which agricul- 

 ture might count, as there would still remain a large number of 

 members representing divisions in which agriculture is a con- 

 siderable factor, and in many of which the agricultural vote, 

 if properly organised, would hold the balance of power. More- 

 over, there are some members whose sympathies are with agri- 

 culture, though they may sit for purely urban constituencies, 

 and these members might often be relied upon to exercise a bene- 

 volent neutrality even if they would not support the Agricultural 



