COUNTRY -HOUSE -AND -SPORT
lortE LAND FOR NOTHING.
SOMETHING was said in this Place a fortnight ago on the' *abject of land for nothing. You- can buy land, not in one Bounty but many, for less than the cost of the buildings upon it. Since that was written I have come upon some really appalling instances of the undeserved cheapening of land within a " good lock-up." The essential value must be higher before time is much older, if England as a whole is going to be worth anything. It cannot be due to any essential cause that such land in an overpopulated country, chiefly inhabitated_ by urban folk with large appetites, can be worth less than 4ntipodean land whose best market is 10,000 miles away. t;'onsider comparative_ values. Farming. lands on the Darling Downs towards the boundaries of New South Wales and Queensland fetches about £9 an acre, usually without any house or building upon it. Even in Australian Back. Blocks any land equipped with rabbit wire fetches a good 'deal more-:—. it the value of houses be cOrisidered—than theSe delicious fields in Wiltshire and in what I think the best of all the English counties, Berkshire. To take a rather less distant Comparison, a planted apple orchant in the Okanagan Valley, in British Columbia has sold for £250 'an. Acre, in spite of a Water-rate (itself much higher than Britiih rents) of £3 or More an acre. To come yet nearer. land_in 'Nova Scotia is very cheap, certainly below its proper. value, but most of it is dearer by several poundi than "these Wiltshire pastures or Berkshire chalk lands.
: This cheapness has a most disastrous effect on the nation's own supply both of food and Of countrymen.: One may venture the general assertion that where land is cheap it is despised. Let anyone who will walk from the edge of the Marlborough Downs eastward along a line just north of that delightful trout stream, the Kennet, and he will meet a succession of signs of contempt for land, for land-produce, for cottages and houses. There are areas quite given . up to weeds, there are stir-As-left to theininfstiationi'Of rats and the Wind; theic are the cruinbling relics ofzitirished. Villages, there are homesteadZ in ruins. These- melancholy spectacles apPea'r 'side by side with fields rich with a heavy_ harvest, looking very golden in the sunshine. -.These things are 'true, but not generally Believed because they seem incredible: What a service to the country would-be- rendered if akrat pilgrimage. of members Of Parliament' Could" be 'organized to that desecrated-Shrine 1 How I should like to plot out the walk-1-
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