MR. RIDER HAGGARD ON AGRICULTURE.
1V[It. RIDER HAGGARD has now finished the survey of English agriculture which he has been publish- ing in the Daily Express, and the conclusions at which he has arrived are well worth the attention. of every man who owns land, or loves the land, or fears for the future of the land. He is by birth and training a- landoivner, he under- stands the practical working of the land, he has the experience not only of this but of other countries, he has the keenest of eyes, and he has indefatigable industry in investigation. He has also, what we did not quite expect when he began his inquiry, a remarkable freedom from prejudice, . whether of class or training, and can accept facts which he dislikes without allowing his dislike t.0 warp- his judgment. He is, for instance, we imagine, Hiclmed to believe_that Englishmen would be wise, for the :sake of the nation and not of any . class, to restore Protection to agriculture, that is, in fact, to pay a con- siderable bountyon the production of food ; but he perceives that this must be excluded from the list of possible remediee for agricultural depression. Free-trade, the spirit and the fact both, has, he allows, so intertwined itself with every department of the national life that to abandon it would produce endless disturbance, even if it did not result, as he thinks it would, in insurrection. The remedy for the evils now upon us must, therefore, be sought elsewhere ; but it should be sought, and with eagerness, for those evils are great and pressing, and involve not only the prosperity of agriculture, but the character and the safety of the nation itself.
Mr. Haggard finds, as the result of inquiries carefully pursued through the length and breadth of England, that agriculture is no longer either profitable or attractive. The landlord does not get easily even his lowered rent ; the farmer in most counties barely lives, and remains a farmer only because he knows no other occupation, or because he is by nature unable to follow any other life ; while the labourer, though better paid and treated than of yore, detests his labour and will not remain upon the soil. About the position of the landlord there is, we imagine, no dispute. Partly through the direct fall in rents, and partly through the increased expense of "keeping up" an estate, every tenant demanding improvements previously unthought of, his income has diminished on the average nearly one half—in Essex and Suffolk much more than that—and the saleable value of his property in a still larger proportion. Mortgages once supposed to have been covered by security of thrice their value have been dis- covered to be "risky," because if the lender foreclosed he would obtain less than the money originally advanced. The process is perceptible everywhere, and would be still more so but that the wealthy still desire estates which give them occupation, shooting rights, and importance of a kind; and in many districts there is, therefore, a practice, which to Mr. Haggard seems "unnatural," of spending money on the land instead of receiving money from it. The large farmers are dying out, it being found nearly im- possible to secure tenants for large farms, the medium farmers just live or slowly lose their capital, and only the small holders continue in anything like prosperity. The remaining class, the labourers, are flying from the soil. They can earn nearly double wages in the towns, they think that there they have chances, they have no fear of crowding, their housing in the villages being aboin in able, they have come to regard the labourer's lot as hopeless and degrading—a view, it is known, which the village women take even more strongly—and they depart never to return. Upon this point Mr Haggard insists with ever repeated emphasis. He declares that the truth is hidden from us by the growth of the cities, which make the statistics delusive, by the fact that a generation bred. to field work still survives, and by a vague hope that when the mischief becomes a little worse the labourer will return. He will never return, says Mr. Raggard, whatever the consequences, to be a labourer again, and the citizen, however pressed by poverty, will not and cannot take his place. It is not only that he does not understand. the work and. dislikes it, but that he literally is physically unequal to it. He may be strong in a way, but work out of doors in all weathers for twelve hours a day kills him or sends him into hospital. The result is that, except on the best lands, whichwill always tempt cultivators, the soil is being devoted to grass, not always of the best kind, that agriculture is poverty-stricken, "and that some parts of England are becoming almost as lonesome as the veld. of Africa," and if there is another reduction of prices, especially in meat, much of it will become, as farms in Essex have become, derelict.
This being the situation—and there is scarcely a land- lord or agent or large farmer in England who will not in substance endorse Mr. Haggard's view what is the remedy ? That there should be a remedy may be taken as granted, for even if he and. the doctors exaggerate the effect of city life on the physique and the daring of the people, we do not want all Englishmen to become dwellers in cities ; but what is it to be ? Clearly, in Mr. Haggard's opinion, the splitting up of the country into farms so small that a man can work them with the help of his children only,—peasant holding, in fact, if not peasant proprietorship. "It has been said of me," he says, "that I am a small holdings man,—that I want to cut up England into small holdings.' Well, I am a strong believer in small holdings, with sundry important limitations, Who would not be when he has found, as undoubtedly I have, of course with exceptions, that wherever small holdings exist in England there is comparative prosperity, great love of the soil and a desire to cultivate it, an in- creasing as compared to a diminishing population, a large production of children as compared, at any rate in many instances, to a small production of children, and a con- siderable addition to the supply of local labour ? " But how is that change to be effected, and men tempted to settle on the land? The landowners have not the capital to put up the necessary buildings, and Mr. Haggard is entirely opposed to interference in a direct way and on a large scale by the State. That, he says, would only pauperise the labourers, and probably lead to the ulti- mate loss of the money so invested. He would prefer a humbler scheme, an expansion of the Housing Act of 1$90, under which public bodies and landlords are enabled to borrow moneY from the Treasury to put up cottages and small farm buildings, at a moderate rate of interest, repayable in sixty instead of forty years. If that were done, it would be found, he maintains, that a class unexpectedly numerous would take. the farms, and if helped by the admirable Co-operative banks of the Continent, would work them, would pay their rent, and would lead independent and happy lives. A Minister of Agriculture, equal in rank to other Cabinet 'Ministers, would watch over the process, and. so by degrees a class of tenant yeomen would replace both the farmers and the labourers. He is not enthusiastic about this plan, for he sees that England is a nation of traders and not of agriculturists, and is governed by the opinion of the cities, which want cheap labour and plenty of it, and not the revival of agriculture, and he is, moreover, a bit, or more than a bit, of a fatalist; but this is the only plan which his long survey suggests to him as at once practic- able and just. He pleads, besides, for a new system of rating, and some other minor reforms ; but the essence of his plan is what we have stated, and his opinion may be summed up in a sentence. Agriculture on the existing plan is dying, though it takes a long time to die, as all agricul- tural operations do ; but the tenant of fifty acres can live, can pay rent, and will be a creditable citizen.
We are not fully convinced by Mr. Haggard, doubting, as we do, whether an " assisted " trade is distinguishable from a bounty-fed trade, and believing that every bounty- fed trade must sooner or later die; but he is entitled from his knowledge and experience to be heard, an it is pleasant to hear any strong voice which breaks the deadly silence on the subject. That seems to us the most alarm- ing symptom in the whole matter. The largest and most important of all the trades of the country, the one upon which our whole social system was originally based, is decaying, and may perish, and the nation as a nation will not even consider the facts. It is governed by citizens, and to citizens the condition of the lowest slum is more interesting than that of a countryside, the diet of a prisoner matter of more urgent concern than the content- ment of a ploughman. The manufacturer is cared for, but the landowner pushed aside ; the shopkeeper is heard, but not the farmer ; the workman is flattered and petted e.,t every public meeting, but the labourer may quit his work in disgust with his .lot, and except his employer no one cares. Even the vote has not given to the sower importance in Radical eyes.
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