254 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 



head of Jove. Usually it is only after prolonged discussion and consulta- 

 tion with organisations and individuals that a bill takes shape and gets 

 into sufficient training, so to speak, to run the gauntlet of parliamentary 

 criticism. It is true that a government, having to weigh as best it can the 

 conflicting claims and interests of different industries and sections of the 

 population, may not always meet the wishes of agriculture ; but on 

 examination it will generally be found that while it may withhold desired 

 benefits, it seldom if ever attempts to impose an agricultural law to which 

 there is wide and strong objection throughout the industry. The con- 

 tribution of the civil servant, the so-called bureaucrat, to the legislative 

 process may be one of labour and anxiety, but to call him the real villain 

 of the piece is to flatter him and to ignore the fundamental and very real 

 principle of ministerial responsibility. The British civil servant is truly 

 a servant, informing and advising so far as he reasonably may, but always 

 obeying loyally the government of the day, no matter what its colour or 

 its political philosophy may be. And, if I may say so, British Ministers, 

 of whatever party, do not fail to accord to the Civil Service a corresponding 

 loyalty and that protection from any party criticism without which the 

 Service's impartiality and devotion to duty could not be maintained. 

 The system is the product of a long evolutionary process ; it may have 

 defects, but it is at any rate the fruit of the political genius of the British 

 nation. This, however, is something of a digression. 



If our foreign visitor were historically minded, he might be interested 

 to look into the past to see how present measures of control compare with 

 some of those to which agriculture was subjected in former days. I have 

 no time in this paper, nor have I the qualifications, to accompany him in 

 any comprehensive study of the subject. One can but glance at a few 

 of the more noticeable instances, in some cases forming precedents or 

 foundations for later legislation. In his English Farming Past and Present 

 Lord Ernie says that, ' In the early stages of history, the law itself was 

 powerless to protect individual independence or to safeguard individual 

 rights. Agriculture like other industries was therefore organised on prin- 

 ciples of graduated dependence and collective responsibility. Mediaeval 

 manors in fact resembled trade guilds. ..." 



These continued until the local and gradual break up of the manorial 

 organisation of agricultural labour was accelerated by the Black Death 

 (1348-49). Labour became so scarce that panic wages were asked and 

 paid until in 1349 by Royal Proclamation all men and women ' bond or 

 free,' unless tilling their own land or engaged in merchandise or in some 

 other craft, were compelled to work on the land where they lived at the 

 rate of wages current in 1346. Here, nearly 600 years ago, was wages 

 regulation of a pretty drastic kind, but it was a maximum that was fixed, 

 not a minimum. Later on, in 1563, we find another notable effort to 

 control the labour market in the Statute of Apprentices, which enacted, 

 inter alia, that all persons between 12 and 60, not exempted by the statute, 

 could be compelled to labour in husbandry and that masters unduly 

 dismissing servants were fined and that servants unduly leaving masters 

 were imprisoned. It also stated hours of labour and provided for the 

 fixing of wages by Justices of the Peace. 



