254 r.rJTAiN for tee briton 



tenures, which arc more or less res])on,sible for the present 

 agricultural impasse, were preserved. The landlord, for example, 

 would oppose the abolition, or the extreme modification, of the 

 rental system, in spite of the fact that such a system is, and 

 must be, an insuperable obstacle to successful agriculture, 

 whether under the present Teu'nne of Free- trade or even of 

 Tariff-reform ; and also of the added fact that this fatuous cling- 

 ing to an impossible method of using the land has contributed 

 more to the enormous loss of agricultural wealth during the last 

 thirty years than any other single item in the long table, save 

 that of the more fatuous policy of past Governments. The land- 

 lord is too conservative to favour the removal of the rental 

 system, and the farmer would oppose it because he has some 

 absurd, undefined ideas that the substitution of a universal system 

 of permanent occupying ownership, for the present ever-changing 

 and therefore impossiUe system of tenures, would, in some 

 measure, militate against his interests. The working-classes, 

 erroneously believing with most of their employers — the manu- 

 facturers — that a vast internal agricultural industry would in 

 some way militate against their interests, would be found 

 arrayed against land reform of a nature that would place their 

 country side by side with foreign States in respect to its agri- 

 culture. Then there is a large number of pessimists who, 

 although they have nothing to lose, but a great deal to gain 

 by the creation of a prosperous land industry in our midst, 

 would nevertheless croak and declaim against any change 

 because " it is their nature to do so." 



This section of the community grumbles at everything and 

 lielps to pull down, but it never lends a helping hand in 

 building up. Still, it must be reckoned with as having a 

 voice in State management — save the mark ! 



Futility of peoposing Definite Land Eeform Scheme 



It therefore becomes apparent that whatever scheme may 

 be brought forward for the regeneration of agriculture, it will 

 surely be roundly abused and condemned by a large and politi- 

 cally powerful section of parliamentary voters. For these 

 excellent reasons, as also because not the slightest good to the 

 country has resulted from the efforts of the land-reformers 

 whose names have been referred to, no attempt will be made 

 in these pages to put forward any elaborate sclienie of land- 

 reform. Obviously, such a task would be altogether super- 

 erogatory owing to the ease with which all schemes of the nature 

 can be pulled to pieces, the skill which political parties have 

 attained in political jugglery, the meretriciousness of economic 



