Landed Improvermnts and Legislation. 139 



this shelter, I am sure it would pay a farmer to have a 

 similar one, to be lifted and put down wherever 

 required in the grass fields of his farm. The lower part, 

 up to the height of a wire fence, might be blocked up 

 with any material most easily obtainable, as, for instance, 

 furze, old sacking, or any substance that would check 

 the wind. Now that such an improvement can be made 

 in our temporary pastures in the way indicated in this 

 book, stock can of course be kept far longer on the 

 pastures than was possible formerly, when the old-time 

 " windle-strae "farmers knew of nothing but ryegrass and 

 clover. And if stock is to be kept out both later and 

 earlier in the season, it is evident that the provision 

 of sheltering plantations is a matter of great importance. 

 But all such improvements, like most other improve- 

 ments, require an outlay of capital, and the whole 

 tendency of our legislative interference is against this. 

 The landlord is averse to spend money when he finds 

 that all recent, and all threatened legislation, tends to 

 his disadvantage. The tenant, in turn, is naturally 

 averse to laying out money on another man's land, 

 because his interests and improvements are in turn 

 liable to be injured by the laws with which he is 

 threatened in the interest of the small holders which the 

 Government propose to create throughout the length 

 and breadth of the land. The interests of the landlord, 

 then, are to be sacrificed to those of the tenants, and the 

 interests of the tenants and their labourers to the small 

 holders. Amidst this jungle of state-created interests 

 which are supposed to be favourable to agricultural 

 progress in general and the increase of the rural popula- 

 tion, but which are evidently hostile to both, how can 

 any advance be effected? Progress will undoubtedly 

 be postponed for an indefinite period ahead till the 

 people of the country generally are sufficiently expe- 

 rienced to understand that the pace of agriculture 

 cannot be forced by legislative interference, and that, on 

 the contrary, it is sure to be retarded by it, as it is 



