Report of Departmental Committee , 1906. 3 
The results of this new inquiry are now complete, and 
while this Journal is not the place where it is usual or con- 
venient to discuss the legislative proposals suggested, it is 
nevertheless most interesting to every practical agriculturist 
to observe the unanimity of opinion secured — with whatever 
diversity of view on the methods — as to the desirability of 
materially strengthening the position of British agriculture by 
augmenting its numerical force in the constitution of the body 
politic of the State. It is generally agreed to be an advantage 
to the nation as a whole to stimulate to a keener interest 
in the soil the diminishing ranks of agricultural labour, and 
to open to the best fitted of farm workers further avenues of 
promotion to the tenancy or the ownership of the land. Such 
a result should in theory be secured without inflicting any 
wrong on the occupants of larger farms. The better mixing 
and graduation of the classes engaged in agriculture offer 
opportunities of mutual help and mutual gain. Wisely carried 
out, in the warning of past failures, as well as in the light 
of exceptional successes, such an object may well enlist the 
sympathy and co-operation of the widespread membership 
of the Royal Agricultural Society. A welcome on public 
grounds will therefore be accorded to any really effective 
experiments for planting more agriculturists on the land of 
England. 
The storehouse of information respecting existing local 
conditions, which the Committee’s Report supplies, will be 
drawn on very largely in all future discussions. The mustering, 
in convenient shape for reference, of all the varied proposals 
for dealing by legislation with the matter of the inquiry, is 
another useful piece of work. The sidelights and illustrations 
from the land systems of other countries, which appear in the 
Appendices to the bulky Minutes of Evidence, will in their 
turn afford matter for reflection and study. But for the 
moment the attention of the agricultural public will be mainly 
concentrated on the definite recommendations which are offered 
on the authority of ten of the eleven members who served on 
the Committee. The fact that some of the signatories to the 
Report either qualify or amplify these conclusions by certain 
individual notes and reservations in no way lessens the impor- 
tance of the general findings arrived at ; and the absence of the 
eleventh signature — that of Mr. Jesse Collings, who signs a 
separate Report — was to be expected by any one who remembers 
the assiduity with which the veteran champion of a peasant 
proprietory system prosecutes on a single line the particular 
remedy with which his name is so indelibly identified. His 
colleagues, with no disbelief in the advantages of ownership, 
where that is feasible under present economic and financial 
b 2 
