222 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



unbutti'essed by external financial resources, remaining in one family 

 for more than two generations. Effective insurance against the burden 

 of death duties is in such cases no longer practicable. The continued 

 employment of an estate agent who is not also an experienced farm 

 manager is to many a luxury, of which the estate income will no longer 

 admit. The sale of the estate is one of two alternatives : its owner- 

 management and industrial development constitute the other. The 

 second alternative is possible under a system either of Landlord and 

 Tenant or of Occupying Ownership. 



The relation of landlord and tenant necessarily depends for its 

 success upon the leadership and initiative of the owner, based upon 

 sound knowledge. It operated as a stimulant to English agriculture 

 during the latter part of the eighteenth and the first half of the 

 nineteenth century, because, following the example of George III., 

 Lord Townshend, Lord Leicester, and other enlightened territorial mag- 

 nates, it had become the fashion for the owner to interest himself in 

 farming, and he consequently knew what the land was capable of, 

 and gave a lead to his tenants. With the growing importations of 

 grain from abroad, the increasing prosperity of the industrial popula- 

 tion at the expense of the countryside, and especially in consequence 

 of the agricultural depression during the last two decades of the nine- 

 teenth century, the landowner lost faith in himself and in his true 

 vocation, and had neither the knowledge nor the inclination to give 

 his tenants the lead which they required. It became, in fact, easier 

 for him, by remitting rents and acquiescing in the farmer's desire to 

 lay his land down to grass, to obtain the reputation of a ' good ' land- 

 lord, an expression which meant in all too many cases his abandonment 

 of leadership and his surrender to ignorant or indolent preju- 

 dice. Where neither leadership nor rent remission were forthcoming 

 his old tenants were ruined. The prime condition under which farm 

 tenancy can prosper is the owner's knowledge and management of his 

 estate, similar to that exercised by the manager of an industrial com- 

 pany in relation to his business. The owner, in fact, if he carried out 

 to the full the possibilities of his position, ought continuously, with the 

 knowledge and experience which would render intervention acceptable, 

 to be guiding his tenants in the way of improving their business by the 

 constant application of science to farm practice, the employment of 

 labour-saving machinery, the discovery of new markets, and, above 

 all, by the development of co-operation. If he had but the knowledge 

 and the faith he could have done much during the last half-century by 

 insisting upon the proper education of his tenants' sons before they in 

 their turn became occupiers of his estate holdings, or even by looking 

 to the agricultural colleges for the provision of fresh blood and enter- 

 prise among his tenantry, himself selecting at times a likely youth 

 from the human output of such institutions. 



Whereas at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the 

 nineteenth centm-y certain progi-essive English landowners were 

 definitely and admittedly the leaders of the industry, to-day, and for 

 the past sixty years, landowners have ceased tO' lead. Coke of Norfolk 

 and his oontemix)raries in introducing developments which benefited 



