520 Recommendations of the Royal Commission on Agriculture. 
Minister of Ageicultdbe. 
With reference to the appointment of a Minister of Agricul- 
ture, we believe that a system corresponding to that which pre- 
vails in foreign countries would be attended with advantage, 
and we recommend that the administration of all matters con- 
nected with agriculture should be vested in one public de- 
partment. 
In submitting to Your Majesty the preceding riecommendations 
we desire, in conclusion, to observe that — 
Of the immediate causes of agricultural depression it cannot 
be said that any one of them is necessarily of a " permanent 
character." Bad and good seasons appear to come in cycles, and 
with them alternations of agricultural prosperity or depression. 
This, the main cause of depression, no legislation can control. 
How far foreign competition may affect the home producer in 
the future it is impossible to calculate with any degree of cer- 
tainty. That its effect will continue to be felt may be assumed 
as certain. 
It is to be hoped that the proposals which we have made will, 
if adopted, eventually place all classes connected with land 
in a better position to meet those difhculties to which they are 
necessarily exposed, and which are sure to be, as they always 
have been, of periodical recurrence. 
We have already indicated various matters upon which legis- 
lative interference can benefit directly the agricultural classes 
of this country. But no interference between classes, between 
owners and occupiers, or between employers and labourers, can 
render any one of them independent of the other. We cannot 
recall a period in our history in which the relations of these 
classes have been more severely tried than during the existing 
depression. Owners have, as a rule, borne their share of a 
common calamity, and they, as well as occupiers, have done 
much to avert the distress from the class who are least able to 
bear it. It is satisfactory to know that, as we have already 
observed, upon the labourer it has fallen more lightly than upon 
either owner or occupier. The best hope for the prosperity of 
agriculture lies in the mutual confidence and friendly relations 
of the three classes directly engaged in it, and in the common 
conviction that their interests are inseparable. 
In concluding this Report we may be allowed to record our 
opinion that the condition of British agriculture has never been 
the subject of a more comprehensive and laborious inquiry than 
that in which we have betn engaged. The mass of evidence 
