M.— AGRICULTURE. 245 



liusbaiidiy (not uuaasociated with the niaintenaiicB ot good Hocks) 

 during an age when there was relatively Uttle general progress in crop 

 cultivation. Concurrently, however, and especially during the last fifty 

 years, British live-stock of every description has steadily improved and 

 has attained a position of acknowledged superiority throughout the 

 world. This is largely attributable to the stock-breeding enterprise of 

 three successive sovereigns, including King George V., and to the 

 enthusiastic efforts of such other landowners as the late Duke of Rich- 

 mond and Gordon, Lord Rothschild, Lord Fitzhardinge, Sir Nigel 

 Kingscote, and Sir Walter Gilbey. But the enterprise of landowners 

 in this respect has not, as a rule, been conducted on strictly commercial 

 Imes, and has often been dissociated from the nationally more important 

 task of land cultivation. 



It is an unfortunate fact which emerges from the annals of the 

 English countryside throughout several centuries that the attainment by 

 the landed proprietor of such a measure of wealth, whether arising from 

 periods of agricultural prosperity or from external sources, as will leave 

 a. fair margin over and above the reasonable requirements of family 

 comfort, has produced an inclination toi exchange the position of wealth 

 producer for that of rent receiver, and to become progressively detached 

 m activity and interest from agricultural pursuits. Groping after 

 political power, clambering after social elevation, excessive indulgence 

 in sport and the adaptation or sacrifice of landed property to its demands, 

 and the pursuit of careers evoking a stronger appeal to national senti- 

 ment or conspicuous achievement, have all operated to detach the 

 owners from the soil. Thoughtful patriots and economists of all ages 

 have commented upon this tendency with regret. ' Our gentry, ' writes 

 Pepys during the agiicultural depression of the latter part of the 

 seventeenth century, ' are grown ignorant in everything of good 

 husbandry,' and he deplores the fact that without their initiative 

 progress is almost impossible. 



John Stuart Mill surely enunciated sound economic truth, as well 

 as wise public policy, when, writing in 1848, he said : ' The reasons 

 which form the justification ... of property in land are valid only in 

 so far as the proprietor of land is its improver. ... In no sound 

 theory of private property was it ever contemplated that the proprietor 

 of land should be merely a sinecurist quartered upon it. ' 



Whenever agriculture is depressed fiscal Protection is sought as the 

 chief remedy for its ills. Dependence upon Government is apt to destroy 

 initiative, self-reliance and resourcefulness, and to breed inertia. It is 

 at best a broken reed upon which to lean in an industrial country with 

 a teeming urban population. If the imminence of threatened starvation 

 in times of war evokes Government measures of artificial stimulation 

 to the process of food production they are necessarily ephemeral and 

 evanescent, and can afford no continuing stability. The prospect of 

 relatively cheap seaborne food is sure to discredit among urban workers 

 any policy which raises artificially the cost of that produced at home or 

 extends its production by subsidies, provided mainly at the expense of 

 the non-agricultural population. German agricidture flourished in pre- 

 War days not in consequence of, but in spite of, its Protectionist policy 



