1921.] 



The New Farming Landowner. 



1099 



THE NEW FARMING LANDOWNER, 



The Earl of Selborne, E.G., G.C.M.G. 



The agricultural landowner who let his land to a tenant 

 farmer but did not farm any of it himself, and the' tenant 

 farmer who rented land from a landowner and farmed it but 

 farmed no land of which he was himself the owner, have played 

 a very important part in the history of agriculture and in the 

 economic life of the nation during the past 200 years; but it is 

 my belief that both classes are slowly passing away. 



The partnership has been an odd one and much to the 

 advantage of the tenant farmer. In good times he Has been 

 able to secure a fair commercial return for the capital he has 

 invested in the industry, and, since annual tenancies replaced 

 leases, he has been able to quit the business quickly when, 

 times have been bad. The landowner, on the other hand, in 

 good and bad times alike has received a wholly uncommercial 

 interest for the capital he has invested in the industry. In 

 bad times he has been liable to have the cultivation of the 

 land thrown on his hands without the experience or the equip- 

 ment with which to cultivate it successfully, and, latterly at 

 any rate, in good times he has been very chary about raising 

 the rent. This comparison is the more remarkable when it is 

 remembered that at least two-thirds of the capital employed in 

 agriculture have been supplied by the landowner. 



The cultivated land of England is not, as Socialists are fond 

 of saying, the free gift of God any more than the coat that the 

 Socialist wears is the free gift of God. The cultivated land, 

 like the coat, has been manufactured by the use of the brains 

 and the physical strength given by God. Any amount of land 

 can be had in the centre of Africa for nothing to-day, because 

 it is in its natural state and unmanufactured, or (to use the 

 term which is applied to the manufacture of cultivable land) 

 unreclaimed. Exactly the same process has taken place in 

 England during the centuries since the Eomans came here. 

 With the exception of tracks of down or heath land England 

 was one mass of forest, thicket, swamp, or bog, and, when a 

 landowner to-day acquires an agricultural property either by 

 inheritance or purchase, what he acquires is not the land in 

 its natural state but the product of reclamation and the 

 industrial equipment of the land. This equipment is also an 



