432 GENERAL CONCLUSIONS 



the trouble to learn and attends to his business, farming 

 now offers every prospect of a good return on his 

 capital ; there are no fortunes to be made, but on the 

 other hand the farmer obtains without expense much 

 of open air and country life and sport for which the 

 city man is prepared to pay heavily. 



As to land tenure we need to recognize that the 

 characteristic British system, to which our farming 

 owes the pre-eminence it still enjoys, is one of tenancy 

 of comparatively large farms, a system which, whatever 

 may be its defects, draws men of capital to agriculture 

 and leaves them with their capital free to put into 

 their business. It is not a logical system, it admits of 

 injustices, it often condones bad farming, but our 

 people being what they are, it works ; and judged by 

 results it has got more out of the land and produced 

 better crops and stock than any other existing system. 

 The Agricultural Holdings Acts have cut off the 

 possibilities of the worst injustices, and except in 

 certain special cases have given the tenant a reasonable 

 measure of security of tenure, so that to-day he very 

 generally prefers to hold by yearly agreement rather 

 than on a lease. There is little or no demand for a 

 land court or any external rent-fixing agency, little 

 call for any stiffening of the Acts either in the direction 

 of longer notices or an enlarged definition of improve- 

 ments. Some men would like to be paid for continued 

 good farming, and such a claim would be sound 

 enough if anyone could produce a definition of good 

 farming or a method of compensation capable of ex- 

 pression in figures. Perhaps, if owners were more 

 insistent on good farming the grievance would vanish ; 

 good farming should be its own reward, only as things 

 are the man who has done well by the land feels a 

 little sore at not being able to leave on better terms 



