260 BEITAIN FOn THE BUTTON 



complied with, a man would succeed in agriculture just as well 

 as he would in any other industry, hut it is hecause these 

 necessary conditions have 7iut been complied with that agri- 

 culture has failed, and will continue to fail. 



The reader should pause here to rellect upon this "new 

 view of an old question " ; and it is because the British people 

 have owt taken it into consideration that British agriculture 

 has failed as the agriculture of no other country has failed. 



Every conceivable means have been taken by men of 

 various conditions and under varying circumstances, con- 

 sciously or unconsciously, to either kill outright or seriously 

 cripple the agricultural industry of the country ; and now that 

 they have accomplished their purpose, they either treat it as 

 being the poor feeble thing it is — an incapable, effete industry, 

 or wonder why people are foolish enough to cling to, or hanker 

 after, agriculture when — " there's really no money in the land, 

 you know." 



As " The Free-trade Movement " has been of considerable 

 service in illustrating previous chapters, further reference to 

 it may be usefully made to prove the utter impracticability of 

 the rental system in agriculture, and how utterly unsuited it 

 was to the requirements of the industry, or of the country, 

 even in the so-called palmy days of agriculture. 



Cobden's Plea for Agriculture 



Quoting from one of Cobden's parliamentary speeches, the 

 writer of " The Free-Trade Movement " says — 



" The agricultural distress continued through the winter, and on 

 March l;>, 1845, Mr. Cobden moved in the House to appoint a 

 select committee 'to inquire into the causes and extent of the 

 alleged existing agricultural distress, and into the effect of legis- 

 lative protection upon the interests of landowners, tenant-farmers, 

 and farm-labourers ' . . . ' How is it,' he asks, ' that in a country 

 overflowing with capital, when there is a plethora in every other 

 business — when money is going to France for railroads and to 

 Pennsylvania for bonds, when it is connecting the Atlantic with 

 the Pacific by canals and diving to the bottom of Mexican mines 

 for investment — it yet iinds no employment in the most attractive 

 of all spots, the soil of this country itself ? ' He answers, ' Capital 

 shrinks instinctively from insecurity of tenure, and we have not in 

 England that security which will warrant men of capital investing 

 their money in the soil.' He goes on to maintain that ' the Avant 

 of leases and security deters tenants from laying out their money in 

 ihe soil.' ' Tenants therefore are prevented by their landlords from 

 carrying on cultivation properly. They are made servile and de- 

 pendent, disinclined to improvement, afraid to let the landlord see 



