" NABOTH'S VINEYARD."
[To THE EDITOR Or TEE " SPECTATOR "] Sta,—In your admirable article on "A Better Future for Farming" in the Spectator of May 29th, this sentence occurs: " In order to avoid arbitrary or malignant action a full inquiry is provided for, and appeal is also to be allowed to the High Court." I suggest that the best security against such action would be for the Act to insist that the proceedings at the meet- ings of the District Agricultural Committees should be open to the public. The trouble arises chiefly in the case of small occupiers, for whom the probable cost of carrying an appeal to the High Court would be prohibitive. During the war I heard of a good many instances, and I personally knew of two, in which covetous or malignant action by an unscrupulous farmer against an adjoining occupier, through the secret agency of a member of the local Agricultural Committee, whose name and whose statements to the Committee were treated as confidential, was the cause of serious injury to the victim. In both the cases to which I specially refei the subsequent inspection by the Agricultural Committee's nominee was very perfunctory, and was obviously only intended to confirm the verdict of the Com- mittee. Very shortly afterwards the cultivation of these two small farms was pronounced to be quite satisfactory by a fully qualified and well-known, but quite independent, land valuer. My belief is that had the proceedings at the meetings of the local Agricultural Committee been compulsorily public the two charges to which I have specially referred would never have
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