278 IJIUTAIN FOll THE BRITON 



where we have so many great Lauded proprietors whose estates 

 run into tens of thousands of acres, individual res})onsibilities 

 often assume gigantic proportions. Take the case of any man 

 with an inheritance of this kind, and gauge his stake in the 

 country, and his potentialities for good or evil. He is often 

 prodigiously rich, apart from his landed w^ealth, and it is a 

 matter of no great moment to him whether his land lets for 

 five shillings an acre or fifty, whether it produces the maximum 

 yield of food-stuffs for the people, or whether it goes out of 

 cultivation altogether. He would of course like to see it ivdl 

 farmed, higlily productive, and bringing in good rents ; but if 

 farmers caimot make it pay, it had better be turned into grass, 

 or taken over for sporting purposes, and this is its fate in many 

 instances. 



Landownees' Obligations to their Country 



In this sense it may justly be said that these men have 

 failed in their obligations to their country and the people. 



We have shown in other chapters how tlie farmer has 

 collapsed, partly througli want of capital and lack of energy, 

 and we have now to grasp the fact that the landlord has helped 

 to bring about the present impasse by a laisscz /aire attitude, 

 when he should have been vigilant and resourceful. He should 

 have realised that the great changes which were made in tlie ami- 

 cultural industry more than sixty years ago necessitated, in turn, 

 considerable changes in the system that had subsequently been 

 followed, and that, above all things, ample capital, the applica- 

 tion of up-to-date methods, rigid economy, and thrift, were more 

 than ever necessary to save the industry from destruction. He 

 should, moreover, have realised, that if his tenant-farmers lacked 

 these essentials, he, at all events, possessed, or at least had 

 access to, them ; and that it was his duty to turn this current of 

 life-giving forces, coupled with high enterprise and untiring 

 energy, on to the land to save a great industry from being lost 

 to the country, and a great number of people from incurring 

 poverty and semi-starvation. 



Failing the tenant-farmer, the landed proprietor should 

 have farmed his own lands, and his justification for this would 

 not only have been found in the fulfilment of his obligations to 

 the people, but in the fact that it would have actually paid him 

 to have done so. 



From such a standpoint it would certainly appear that our 

 landed proprietors have failed to realise their responsibilities, 

 failed to understand that, in becoming lords of the soil, many 

 obligations to the country were involved in that lordship, many 

 duties of a grave and onerous nature that are not involved in 



