A REAL SOLUTION URGENTLY DEMANDED 1 53 



upper class farmers who have survived are those who, 

 like myself, are independent of their farms.' " ^ 



I wish to press, with all the force the accumulated facts 

 of this inquiry supply, the contention that the history of 

 the past depression, and the present position of the 

 working farmers upon the land, calls for urgent and 

 immediate action of Parliament. 



I am also profoundly convinced that, if the present 

 opportunity is not seized to give by legislation fuller 

 protection to the capital invested by tenants in cultiva- 

 ting and improving the land, and to establish sound 

 business relations between landlord and tenant, and a 

 workable machinery for guarding and vindicating those 

 relations, a large proportion of the present occupiers will 

 probably be brought to ruin before the rents are re- 

 adjusted to prevent this result. Further, if prices improve, 

 and confidence revives, it is plain that the full benefit of 

 this improvement will rapidly be transferred to the land- 

 owners, and that, on the probable recurrence of bad 

 seasons and low prices, the tenant farmers of that time 

 will again be exposed to the same exhaustion of their 

 profits and their capital. The features of these depres- 

 sions, and the necessarily disproportionate losses im- 

 posed on the occupiers, at the time things go wrong, 

 are now so clearly established, that it would be not 

 only unjust to existing tenant farmers to postpone 

 legislation any longer, but in the highest degree inimical 

 to the future interests of agriculture. 



' Beds, etc., p. 55. 



