LAND TENURES 261 



tluit they could improve their farms, lest he should pounce on thom 

 for an increase of rent.' And he showed from specimens that when 

 leases were granted, the 'covenants were of such a preposterous 

 character that I will defy any man to carry on the business of 

 farming properly under them.' " * 



It is clear from this trenchant attack of Cobden's on the 

 system of land tenures of sixty odd years ago, that it was then 

 regarded as unsuited to the requirements of the industry, and 

 as subversive to the true national economy as it is to-day, 

 and yet since 1845, when these words were uttered, no ad- 

 ministration — irrespective of its political cognomen — that has 

 assumed the reins of government in all these years, has ever 

 done aught to remove the reproach that, in its agricultural 

 policy, the British Governmeut is dominated by vested interests, 

 and is therefore constrained to resort to class legislation. 



Most people nowadays realise that Cobden, in condemning 

 the system, was not so much pleading for agriculture as 

 denouncing Protection, nevertheless, he truly depicted the 

 fundamental falseness of the agricultural basis. This view of 

 the position is borne out by the following : — 



" But the most powerful section of this speech is that in 

 which he demonstrates from agriculture the fundamental fallacy 

 of Protection." | 



Purther on it is stated — 



" In a powerful peroration he appealed to the gentlemen, the 

 high aristocracy of England, ' to play in a mercantile age that noble 

 part which in feudal times had made their ancestors the leaders of 

 the people ' ; but he adds, ' if you are found obstructing that pro- 

 gressive spirit which is calculated to knit nations more closely 

 together by commercial intercourse ; if you give nothing but 

 opposition to schemes which almost give life and breath to in- 

 animate nature, and which it has been decreed shall go on, then 

 you are no longer a national body.' " X 



Land Tenures condemned by Cobden 



That Cobden and his followers were, at all events, fully 

 cognisant of the utter worthlessness of British land tenures, 

 is beyond doubt, and this simple truth is of more concern to 

 us here than the political uses he made of the fact. The rental 

 system was condemned as an impossible one in 1845 ; it was 

 condemned ages before that date, and it is condemned to-day, 

 and the British people have the right to ask pertinent questions. 



* " The Free-Trade Movement," p. 8G. 

 t Ibid., p. 87. X Il^iii- 



