The argument is very cogent and clear.  They say, ’We pay a rent which is almost as much as the land will bear; we suffer by foreign competition, bad seasons and so on, the market is falling, and we are compelled to reduce our labour expenditure.  But then our workmen say that at the home farm the wages paid are a shilling or two higher, and therefore they will not accept a reduction.  Now you must reduce your wages or your tenants must suffer.’  It is like a tradesman with a large independent income giving his workmen high wages out of that independent income, whilst other tradesmen, who have only their business to rely on, are compelled by this example to pay more than they can afford.  This is obviously an unjust and even cruel thing.  Consequently though a landlord may possess an income of many thousands, he cannot, without downright injustice to his tenants, pay his immediate employes more than those tenants find it possible to pay.

Such is the simple explanation of what has been described as a piece of terrible tyranny.  The very reduction of rent made by the landlord to the tenant is seized as a proof by the labourer that the farmer, having less now to pay, can afford to give him more money.  Thus the last move of the labour party has been to urge the tenant-farmer to endeavour to become his own landlord.  On the one hand, certain dissatisfied tenants have made use of the labour agitation to bring pressure upon the landlord to reduce rent, and grant this and that privilege.  They have done their best, and in great part succeeded, in getting up a cry that rent must come down, that the landlord’s position must be altered, and so forth.  On the other hand, the labour party try to use the dissatisfied tenant as a fulcrum by means of which to bring their lever to bear upon the landlord.  Both together, by every possible method, endeavour to enlist popular sympathy against him.

There exists a party in cities who are animated by the most extraordinary rancour against landlords without exception—­good, bad, and indifferent—­just because they are landlords.  This party welcomes the agitating labourer and the discontented tenant with open arms, and the chorus swells still louder.  Now the landlords, as a body, are quite aware of the difficulties under which farming has been conducted of late, and exhibit a decided inclination to meet and assist the tenant.  But it by no means suits the agitator to admit this; he would of the two rather the landlord showed an impracticable disposition, in order that there might be grounds for violent declamation.

Fortunately there is a solid substratum of tenants whose sound common sense prevents them from listening to the rather enchanting cry, ’Every man his own landlord.’  They may desire and obtain a reduction of rent, but they treat it as a purely business transaction, and there lies all the difference.  They do not make the shilling an acre less the groundwork of a revolution; because ten per cent, is remitted