viii PREFACE 



yielded, made it the safest form of investment. 

 This behef has been in the last ten years 

 rudely discredited. The speeches of prominent 

 members and supporters of the present Govern- 

 ment threaten to make land the most unsafe 

 of British insecurities. This sudden change 

 has checked the flow of capital into an industry 

 that urgently needs money for its develop- 

 ment, drives owners to sell their estates, and 

 creates a new risk for tenant farmers which 

 destroys their confidence and paralyzes their 

 energies. Tenants do not know from day to 

 day when they may not be confronted with 

 the alternative of buying or quitting their 

 farms. Against this new danger a new form 

 of security is needed. The Unionist leaders 

 propose that tenant farmers should be protected 

 against this fresh insecurity by being enabled 

 to borrow the whole of the necessary purchase 

 money from the State on reducible mortgages, 

 paying off the loan by annual instalments 

 within a period of years. 



The same principle may be applied to one of 

 the most disquieting features in our national 

 life — namely, the depopulation of rural districts 

 in England and Wales. To arrest the pro- 



