144 Land Court for Scotland. 



they are directing against the landed proprietors of 

 Great Britain, and the best interests of the kingdom. 

 You cannot eat your cake and haiye it, udless perhaps it 

 should happen to be oil cake, and, strange as the state- 

 ment may appear to a land-legislator with his eyes fast 

 shut to the baneful side of his efforts, you cannot eat a 

 landlord and have a landlord. In other words you 

 cannot drive capital from these improvements — such as 

 the planting of shelter belts for one instance — ^which 

 the landed capitalists will alone effect, without most 

 permanently fatal results. This elementary fact will, 

 I fear, only be perceived by land-legislators when it is 

 too late — too late, because all experience has shown that 

 capital when once driven away from a business or a 

 country (Ireland for instance) can hardly ever be 

 induced to return. 



The publication of this letter nxay seem premature, 

 and I therefore quote from Mr. Ure (the Solicitor 

 General for Scotland) the following passage from a letter 

 of his to a correspondent, published in the Scotsman 

 of November 22nd, 1907. He says : — " I personally 

 would not deny to large farmers a fair rent court, and T 

 have no doubt that, when large farmers are agreed upon 

 that topic, as small farmers now are, their wishes will 

 be given effect to by the legislature." 



Here we have a direct promise of the worst feature of 

 Irish land legislation, the natural results of which are 

 shown in the above given letter — i.e., the cessation of 

 landlord's improvements, and a complete severance of 

 the old relations between landlord and tenant. 



