THE LAND CAMPAIGN. Cr° 1111 Reno. 01 TVA “Orserwros."3 Sue,—He
who begins by losing his head ends by losing every- thing. In a democratic age the man who refrains from asking, or rather demanding, his rights is ignored and, together with those rights, is contemptuously trampled underfoot. There is grave danger at the present time that the case of the English landowner may be seriously prejudiced by his dislike of posing before the footlights and telling the public the "plain, un- varnished tale" of the income derived from land and the expenditure required upon it, For the moment it is the official policy of the Unionist leaders to concentrate upon Home Rule and the Insurance Act and to leave the land alone, as was explained to the writer the other evening when he took the chair at a village meeting in East Anglia. Of course our leaders ought to know beet, but one cannot forget that the Radicals are the attacking force, and as such can to a great extent choose their own field of battle. If the enemy chooses to attack you on a flank, it is really no use raying "Frontal attacks only attended to to-day. I am not taking any others at present." We are told sometimes that it is quite open to the owners and occupiers of land to get up a laud inquiry and a report of their own as a countermove to the Radical campaign. It is, of course, possible to do this, but the question is whether it would be effective. In the matter of mud-tbrowing it is much easier to throw the mud than to erase its effects, and in private life no individual attempte to meet slander or libel by the elaborate and expensive circula- tion of denial, but at once seeks his remedy in the Courts, and insists that his libeller—on whom the onus of proof rester— should justify his charges or pay the penalty. This is the course which, as near as may be, we landowners ought to take, and since our detractors and their followers would never trouble to read the private statements of our ease, and, indeed, deny that we have any case at all, our policy, surely, is to demand a bearing before a Royal Commission, or other 'im- partial tribunal, so that we may be either heard and cleared or heard and judicially condemned.
Mr. Lloyd George declared the other day that while the
farmer pays 25s. in rent, he only spends 20s, on labour. This is certainly untrue, and even if true would be entirely mis- leading. Before a Royal Commission we could explain, and be cross-examined on our explanation, that for every 25e, received by the landlord be, as a rule, after providing for Land Tax, tithe, repairs upkeep, and insurance, only pocket.. 15s. to 18s.—sometimes even less—and that the amount so pocketed generally represents only interest on money laid oat by himself or his predecessors in the equipment of the land. Again, it is a curious fact that where tithe is highest wages are lowest, and it would be interesting to have some explana- tion of this at the hands of impartial Commissioners. The Land Union, through its pamphlets, has done good work in refuting some of the mendacious charges made in the Land Inquiry Report, but we need eomething more than this—we need a public tribunal before which our accusers shall either prove their assertions or admit that these are incapable of
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