REASONS FOR GREATER FREEDOM 1 77 



not be grown continuously, and that straw shall not be 

 sold off — is in itself a rediictio ad absurduni of the old 

 ideas, and a complete demonstration that the true 

 method is not to arbitrarily fetter the discretion of 

 tenant farmers, but rather to give the utmost encourage- 

 ment to intelligent enterprise, so long as the one essential 

 point, the maintenance of fertility, is observed. 



Mr. Druce, Secretary of the Farmers' Club and 

 Assistant - Commissioner in the former Commission, 

 says it is only fair in these days that the tenant 

 farmer should have as free a hand as possible in farming 

 his land and in the sale of produce. With a covenant 

 to keep the farm, and leave it in good heart and 

 condition, the landlord is safeguarded, and has a legal 

 claim that can be enforced against the tenant at any 

 time. " I do not think it right to treat the tenant as 

 a man who means to ruin the land and to make all he 

 can out of it and hurt his landlord." The holding 

 should be left in the rotation usual in the district. 



Mr Punchard says : " Any man who can be trusted 

 can have freedom of cropping and sale at any time ; it 

 would be a very dangerous thing to put it into the hands 

 of many farmers." 



Mr Bowen Jones would have complete freedom in all 

 future tenancies, the landlord restricting sales in the last 

 year of the tenancy, and protecting himself year by year 

 as to clean and thorough cultivation of the farm. 



Mr Carrington Smith, and other witnesses, hold that all 

 restrictions, except from breaking up of old pasture, 

 should be got rid of: " No one is so good a judge of how 

 land is to be cultivated as the man in occupation of the 

 land." 



Mr Owen Williams (Denbighshire) says : " When a 

 tenant farmer is a practical man, he ought to know best 

 how to cultivate his land, and he is certain to cultivate 

 it to the best of his ability for his own benefit, as well as 

 for the benefit of the landlord." 



Mr Kidner puts the converse : " Restrictions will never 

 turn a bad farmer into a good one." 



Mr Rew reports general demands in North Devon of 



M 



