THE LAND QUESTION 



A LAND SCARE. 



The delusive statements made in the London newspapers and echoed by 

 the Provincial press for electioneering and party purposes, have pro- 

 duced a national scare — disastrous in effect in cases of forced sales and 

 uncertain tenures. This scare will be shown to have been unfounded. 

 As Professor Elliot has so clearly demonstrated, in his analysis of the 

 Wilton House Home Farm accounts, that an inferior type of arable 

 land can be profitably farmed, and its fertility maintained, for so long a 

 period as twenty-three years, it is purposed in this treatise to afford 

 additional evidence that arable farming, notwithstanding the abrogation 

 of the Corn Laws, may be relied upon as an investment for capital, skill, 

 and commercial enterprise. 



Professor Elliot, in his examination and solution of the " Land 

 Question/' demonstrates that Protection afforded to the "land capi- 

 talist" an opportunity — through competition — to obtain an increased 

 rental, and to the tenant-occupier a substitute for capital, inasmuch as it 

 enabled him to obtain 7s. a bushel, or £2 16s. per quarter, instead of 

 3s. 9fd. a bushel, or £1 10s. 6d. per quarter, being the cost of its 

 production; and other cereals in a like ratio. Moreover, the tenant- 

 occupier acquired, as an additional capital, the virgin fertility of the soil 

 — which he imperceptibly diluted at his discretion. This is, perhaps, 

 the solution of the question, " Why did farming in former years, with 

 expensive cultivation, pay best ? " And (on the other hand) it may be 

 asked, has this exhaustive farming so deteriorated the natural fertility 

 of the country as to justify the giving up by the tenant-occupier into 

 the landowners' hands the farms of the country, to be restored to 

 fertility at his own expense, now that the fictitious aid of Protection has 

 been removed? The investigation of the position of agricultural pur- 

 suits in this kingdom during the present century necessitates the 



