ENGLAND CHANGING HANDS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 17729, 13 September 1919, Page 7

ENGLAND CHANGING HANDS

NEW LANDLORDS WITHOUT TRADITIONS. A MOUTCNiFUL SURVEY. While for tho last el-: months wo have i, wrangling aloud about- peace, a silent revolution, which will transform the aspect a esswico of our national lifo, has gone ft" u f! u .^ Uc< ? r / (writes "An Englishman" in 10 Daily JMa-iIJ. Tho land and the great louses ot England uro changing hands. Tho SSi* i or , Mnny generations has kept p ht the torch of and amenity is i U ty disnoste-Bed. Broad acres and stately palaces are put up to auction

and knocked down to tho highest bidder. And with them go the gear, the jewels, tho pictures, and the books which wero tlio pa.aces fairest ornament. Day after day the ccramblo progresses merrily. With a reckless gaiety the newly rich gather into their laps those ancient treasures And so little havo live years of war availed to empty tho Dockets" of tho fortunate that prices mount ever higher as the competition increases. The markets of and P:..ris are thrown open to all tho world, and by a strange irony, where we expected a universal poverty we find a careless boastful flaunting of well-filled money-bags. 'I ho books, the jewels, tho pictures, all the treasures which may be called portable property, will some day, let us hope, rediscover their old home. They are being sent abroad, maybe for a sojourn only, vvtio buys them for extravagant sums, far mgher than their value, can bo dimly sur'ff ~ «crmans, we are told on sound authority, are keen competitors, who buy through neutral agents in the happy confidence that jf they exchange their hoarded gold for works of art they cannot be asked o furmsh any part of tho indemnity exacted by the Allies. Tho Germans are cunning enough to leave no chance untried, and wo need not be surprised if five years hence we tind our rare books and precious pictures (( proudly displayed in Berlin and Munich. LANDLORDS WITHOUT TRADITION. To see our land stripped of its jewels, literary and artistic, is deplorable, truly. Lut our ceprviation is not final, since a turn ot fortune's v.'bce! may bring those jewels back ajjain. Nor does it foreshadow a revolution and a change in tho habits of the peoplo. Tho selling of landed estates cannot be regarded as anything less than a disaster, except so far as it increases tho number of small holdings and gives a wholesome encouragement to tho best industry the world has ever known—the tilling of ■?i or th o most part, the estates will 2ass less worthy landlords, to men who do not understand the tradition of our attenuate:! feudalism, who forget that the land carries with it duties as well as rent, and who will look to it, as they look to their factories, to brinar a comfortable profit. lho landlords of England, as we have known them in tho past, have not regarded their estates as a mere source of profit. They havo believed themselves ioint pro-

prietors with their tenants, whoso losses the v have shared, and whoso interests they have cherished as their ov,n. But the death dues and the war liavo done their work, and tho class which without fear or hesitation hns sacnfi.ed ite youi-h to the countrv's cause now finds itself compelled to strip itself not cniy of the gathered wealth of its libraries snd picture galleries, but also of the and, which it administered, for tho most part, with wisdom and generosity. All those who are not blind with class hatred will regret this sudden, enforced transference of responsibility. A man cannot learn tho duties of a great landlord in a year or in a generation; and the change of ownership of which we hear daily does not mean a wider diffusion of wealth or fields; it means no more than the substitution of one class for another. Moro than once in our history a like change has taken place, and the change has never been for tho better. Even thouerh the new landlords have learned their duties after a while, the period of transition has always meant higher priccs than before and worse cultivation. ENGLAND A RANCH? The people profited nothing by tho change of ownership after tho Wars of th e Roses. Nor was tho high price of corn their only affliction. They saw, to their wonderment and distress, the land go out of cultivation, and they flocked into tho towns or took to tho roa<l for a dishonest livelihod. "Where there v.ere once a great many householders and inhabitants," said Latimer in a famous sermon, "there is now but a shepherd and his dog." In other words, England became a vast ranch, and all the money went into tho pockets of the wcolstaplers. And. since shepherds were ill archers, sho declined also in military strength. _ "Those sheep," wrote one W. S. in 1531, "is the cause of all these mischiefs, for they have driven husbandry out of the country, by which was increased all kinds of foods. But now only sheep, sheep, sheep!" Thus by a change of system which followed a war our country ceased to be Merry England, and there seems no chance that history will not repeat itself. We shall not again sec tho days when farm buildings were kept in sound repair by the landlord, and when rents were returned or diminished after a bad season. The new owners of the soil will turn a stern, immovable eye upon the r>rofits which they make, and will gladly see their cornfields revert to pasture. And the farmers, no longer protected against foreign competition nor guaranteed a fair price for their crops, will find themselves unable to pay tho high wages imposed by tho Government, and one by one will turn their fields into ranches or disappear. Their jilace may be taken by farming trusts, which will manage thousands of acres, will employ as much machinery and as little labour as possible, and will produce only what can be cot cheap and sold dear. Thus the rural exodus will be vastly encouraged until the towns of England are packed with unemployed, until the countryside supports not men but machinery. Tho Government, indeed, heedless of history, has set the farmers an impossible taaic. "Whv." plaintively asks one of them in The 'Times,' "are men, able-bodied, but poor workers, not allowed to com P and work for mo at such wages as they are worth? Why arc they, instead, to be compelled to seek tho hospitality of the workhouse, which will, apparently, under the new Wages Order, be their lot?" He may well ask why. And the Government is malcintr its dangerous experiments at the very moment of an aeTarian revolution! The sixteenth century gives us a warning, and we will not take it. Wherefore there lies before us a choice of evils. Either wo must welcome the trust and its machinery, cr we must echo the Elizabethan lament: '"But now only sheep, sheep, sheep!"