LAND TENUKEB 291 



national reform through Parliamont under the present condition 

 of the party system, many good l»ills never develop into an 

 Act, and if they do they are so sliorn of their best features, and 

 so battered and mangled in the fierce strife whicli rages round 

 them in their passage through the House, that they become 

 feeble and inert and powerless in public interests. 



Government Knows, but is Afiiaid 



The present Government are just as much alive to the neces- 

 sity of (h'astio land reform as were their predecessors, but The 

 Agricultural Holdings Act; The Land A^'alues (Scotland) Lill ; 

 The Small Landholders (Scotland) Bill; The Small Holdings 

 and Allotments Bill; and The Scottish Land Bill show how 

 fearful they are of giving the Opposition cause for offence. 

 The result of this pusillanimous proceeding was a couple of 

 weak Bills wliich served no purpose but to provide the Oppo- 

 sition with a subject for cheap sarcasm and meretricious 

 rhetoric. The Opposition, on the other hand, while heaping 

 ridicule on the Government measure, and laugliing to scorn 

 the utter inadequacy of its provisions would, nevertheless, 

 introduce no Bill of their own providing for far-reaching land 

 reform — of a nature sketched in these pages — if they were 

 returned to power, because they would be afraid of their 

 opponents making too much political capital of it. And so 

 this game of humbug and deceit goes on year after year, and 

 between the two great political parties, who play their own 

 game and not that of the country, the people's interests con- 

 tinue to be fooled away. 



Presumably every Government, whether Liberal-Unionist 

 or Eadical, knows perfectly well what is required to give the 

 people employment and the country prosperity and — peace, 

 but the half-hearted, inadequate, equivocal relief measures they 

 have brought in proclaim that they do not possess sufficient 

 courage to drive home their convictions, the extreme lengths to 

 which the party system is carried in Parliament precluding 

 the possibility of placing any real measure of national reform 

 on the Statute Book. 



Univeusal Agkiculture must come Sooneh or Later 



Whichever way this question may be looked at there is 

 but one conclusion, one prominent commanding feature always 

 before our eyes — The Land, which is and must remain the 

 dominating factor in the great life of the nation. It has 

 plfiased Governments and landowners to ignore this imminent 



