land, subject to such minor exceptions as special circumstances may require, in return for National Land Bonds, and for the subsequent administration of the estates of England and Wales by Government officials. It is claimed that under State ownership there would be a great simplification in such matters as the provision of land for public purposes, land settlement, afforestation and the development of the timber resources of the country, taxation, and the preservation of places of historical interest. The administration should be economical. It would be decentralised on a County basis, under County and District Land Agents. Difficulties now inherent in the management of small or scattered estates would be removed.

It is frankly stated that no advantage, on balance, is claimed for the system of State ownership when contrasted with the system of private ownership which has prevailed so long; it is only put forward to provide an orderly way out of the difficulties which the breakdown of the old system is creating.' But no such moderation is discernible in a subsequent publication-the Rural Report of the Liberal Land Committee, 1923-25. Without attempting to summarise a considerable volume, it may be broadly stated that the Committee has satisfied itself that the state of British agriculture is bad, and that the existing system of landlord and tenant is at fault. It, therefore, proposes that the State should 'resume possession' of all agricultural land, buying out the present owners by annuities, that the land should be relet to socalled 'cultivating tenants,' and the future administration entrusted to County Agricultural Authorities.'

It is clear that the Committee has spared no pains in its investigations, though to one with personal knowledge of several of the authorities quoted, the conclusions derived from their evidence are somewhat surprising. The writer has attempted to test some of them by the facts experienced in the management of a scattered agricultural property of some 30,000 acres, during the past fifteen years. On this property the general standard of farming has steadily improved. Since the war it has only been thought necessary to apply in three cases for a certificate from a County Agricultural Committee that a holding was not being cultivated according to the Vol. 246.-No. 487.

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rules of good husbandry, and in two of these cases the certificate was not granted. Generally speaking, the standard of cultivation is lowest on the holdings let to County Councils or Parish Councils to provide small holdings or allotments. Rents were raised by agreement with the tenants after the war, and have not been reduced: applications for allowances in special cases have been dealt with on their merits. If competition for vacant farms is a fair test, the tenants are not dissatisfied. Since the war there has been one case of bankruptcy. At the moment one holding on the estate is giving cause for anxiety, and this one-no doubt by some unkind coincidence-is farmed by a Dane. But this is very different from the picture of rural England to-day suggested by the Report of the Liberal Land Committee.

It is not proposed here to attempt any detailed criticism of a policy which has already attracted hostile comment from more authoritative sources. But for the present purpose it may be safely said that neither the proposals of Mr Orwin and Colonel Peel, nor those of the Committee, are likely to commend themselves to the agricultural community. Most tenant farmers only wish to remain tenant farmers. Where this has not been possible, most of those who have bought their farms have done so reluctantly. The last thing that any of them are likely to desire is to hold their farms under Government officials or a County Agricultural Authority. And as the industry cannot possibly be carried on without the present farming class, their views on such proposals are entitled to serious consideration. Administration of farms by Government or Local Government officials is not an untried experiment. In recent years probably every County Council in England and Wales has acquired and administered land for the provision of small holdings, and it has been stated that since the war nearly 50 per cent. of the capital involved in the experiment has been lost. It is urged that for the settlement of ex-soldiers on the land loss was inevitable; but when the policy was adopted a loss of 50 per cent. formed no part of the official programme.

Proposals to abolish agricultural landlords as such are open to criticism upon other than economic grounds.

A generous tribute has been paid to the part played by the landowner in the social well-being of the countryside. Industrial strife in the agricultural industry, one of the largest industries in the country, is almost unknown. This is attributed rightly to the fact that a potent cause of social unrest is the segregation of classes, and that in agriculture this is now averted by the co-partnership of landlord, tenant, and labourer. It is suggested by the advocates of State purchase that the landlord, freed from the anxieties of land, would continue to play his part under the new régime, and to apply himself to local administration and the needs of local society. But with the best intentions in the world-he could not do so. He owes his present position in the rural community to the fact that he owns land and shares all its vicissitudes with farmers and labourers: this is the essential link between them. If he is merely a well-to-do man living in the country, he may be described in the village as 'a very nice gentleman,' but the bases of a mutual understanding between himself and his neighbours no longer exist.

There is another aspect of the results of the disappearance of the landowner as such. The writer has drawn attention in a previous article to a truism which is often overlooked-that agriculture can absorb and employ economically a great deal of low-grade labour, which is practically unemployable elsewhere. The reason is that it matters little if certain simple agricultural work is done slowly, so long as it is done conscientiously and correctly. And for the well-to-do, country life and the obligations of a landowner afford an occupation and sphere of usefulness for which no adequate substitute could be found. So long as a wealthy class exists-and there is every indication that it will continue to existthe ownership of land, whether it be regarded merely as a luxury, or the lowest yielding form of gilt-edged investment, can provide at least a respectable background for its activities. But it can do far more than this. It can provide those whose lives are devoted to public life or industry with the necessary relaxation, and on retirement with a field for useful endeavour in which they can still perform valuable service. It can ensure the best environment for the upbringing of their sons, before

they too leave the countryside to play their part in the world. It is recorded that the earliest ambition of Warren Hastings was to repurchase the family estate of Daylesford, and that in his declining years he devoted his time and money to his farms there. A century later Cecil Rhodes purchased a property in Suffolk and recorded in his will, 'I humbly believe that one of the secrets of England's strength has been the existence of a class, termed the country landlords, who devote their efforts to the maintenance of those on their own property.'

If the replacement of the landowner by the State is undesirable on economic and social grounds, the time has not come to say that it is inevitable. Mr Orwin and Colonel Peel have prefaced their proposals with a careful analysis of the distribution of ownership to-day. In round figures, there are 30,000,000 acres of cultivated land in England and Wales. Less than one-twentieth is owned by public or quasi-public bodies-the Crown, the Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall, the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, Universities, Colleges, Schools, Hospitals, and County Councils. One-quarter is now in the hands of owner-occupiers, whose numbers have almost exactly doubled since the war. This fact is cited as the strongest evidence of the breakdown of the old system. But presumably many of these owner-occupiers are also landlords, who occupy only a portion of their estates, and the admirable practice of keeping a farm or farms in hand is steadily increasing. Many of the estates sold have in fact been outlying estates, belonging to 'pluralist' owners, who took advantage of the temporary land boom to sell outlying or distant estates with which they had no close personal connexion. A tendency must not be mistaken for revolution-particularly a tendency which manifests itself in a period of abnormal conditions. Within this period-between 1920 and 1922-the average price of agricultural commodities dropped by 120 points, whereas in the twenty years of the so-called agricultural depression, between 1873 and 1893, they only dropped by 50 points. In these circumstances it is not surprising that changes in the ownership of land are recorded.

Happily there are indications that prices are now more or less stabilised: there have been fewer startling fluctuations within the past three years. And to the

ordinary observer the general conditions of the country. side remain much what they were. In the district best known to the writer, an area roughly twenty miles in length and breadth, two of the principal estates (one of them comprising 9000 acres) have come under the hammer, and the farms are now in the hands of owner-occupiers. But at least twenty-five other estates remain in the hands of private owners, and-what is more remarkable-most of them are resident owners. In some cases land has been bought by new-comers whose wealth is derived from other sources. No doubt a similar state of things would be reported from other counties. In the history of the countryside this sort of displacement is nothing new-it occurred after the Norman Conquest, after the Wars of the Roses, and again in the 18th century-but the continuity of land tenure remained unbroken.

It is sometimes said that, apart from the burdens on an agricultural property, the restrictions upon ownership imposed by successive Agricultural Holdings Acts are such that there is no longer any inducement for a landowner to retain or acquire more land than he intends to occupy himself. It is now almost impossible to terminate an agricultural tenancy, except for bad farming or on the death of the tenant, without paying the equivalent of at least a year's rent as compensation for unreasonable disturbance': this is often described as the beginning of dual ownership. It is open to the landlord or the tenant to demand an arbitration as to the proper rent to be paid for the holding: this is said to foreshadow a Rent Court. If a landlord of the socalled Golden Age of British Agriculture, which followed the Napoleonic Wars, were to return to see how the family estates were faring to-day, he would no doubt be shocked to find that he could no longer prescribe a system of cropping for his tenants; that they were entitled to sell their hay and straw, and to kill rabbits or hares; that he must compensate them for damage done to their crops by game; that he could not give notice to quit to an undesirable tenant-a drunkard or a profligate-without compensating him for unreasonable disturbance; and that any tenant on the estate could require him to carry out, or render himself liable to