226 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



more highly educated landowner who is not himself a farmer to take 

 his full share in the execution of this indispensable task. In fact, the 

 landowner's duty as an organiser increases in inverse ratio with his 

 activity as an actual producer. 



No agent, however competent, can fully discharge the whole duties 

 of the agricultural landowner. Still less can one who is incompetent, 

 whose training is defective, or whose vision is myopic. Just as in 

 Switzerland, where the conservation of forests is essential for the check 

 of avalanches, the State compels a landowner to employ a State-trained 

 forester for the management of his woodlands, so it might be in the 

 national interest here to enact that either the landowner himself or the 

 agent or factor whom he employs shall have passed some test of 

 efficiency as an estate manager. 



English law and custom in relation both to the settlement of estates 



and to the letting of farms have obstructed the full utility of the English 



landlord as a producer and as an agricultural organiser. The Settled 



Land Acts, while in the public interest extending the power of a tenant 



for life under a strict settlement to sell the whole or part of a settled 



estate, have provided that all moneys realised by such alienation shall 



be held by trustees and applied for certain purposes only (for the 



assumed benefit of the inheritance), specifically prescribed either by the 



settlement or by these Statutes. They do not admit of the proceeds 



of sale of a part of a settled estate being applied to capitalise farming 



operations conducted on strictly commercial lines on another part of it. 



If, subject to proper safeguards concerning the capacity and trained 



experience of the life tenant, the Settled Land Acts could be amended 



in this direction, a considerable impetus would be given to farming 



enterprise on the part of limited owners, especially those who have 



no monetary resources outside their estates. Had such enterprise been 



thus stimulated in the past, the capital value of many an estate passing 



to a subsequent life tenant or to a remainderman would have been 



not merely maintained, but greatly enhanced — as was that of Coke of 



Norfolk — and the true object of the settlement would have been achieved, 



with immeasurable benefit to the nation at large. The Law of Property 



Act, 1922, while possibly aiding agricultural enterprise by the destruction 



of copyholds and customary tenures with their fines, heriots, and other 



feudal dues, may, by the abolition of primogeniture on an intestacy, 



stimulate and intensify the desire of many landowners to execute strict 



settlements, and thereby, in the absence of a fi-esh statutory extension 



of the powers of a limited owner, augment the difficulties of J 



their successors in the direction of industrial development. Thej 



settlement of landed estates has become so serious a hindrance 



to their industrial (including their agricultural) development by their! 



owners that it is highly questionable whether legislation may not bel 



desirable forbidding the process altogether as being contrary alike tol 



public policy and to private advantage. The heavy burden of recurrent! 



death duties tends in any case to diminish, and possibly to neutralise 



entirely, the effect of a transaction designed to ensure the continuous! 



devolution of an unimpaired heritage. 



Similarly, the old forms of covenant in farm agreements, whicl: 



