If Sir John Pakington were a little more of a
representative man, his speech of last Saturday to the Worcestershire Chamber of Agriculture would be the event of the Recess. He evidently thinks that English tenant farmers have a claim to " tenant- right,"—not exactly, perhaps, in its Irish form, but in some form conferring a strong legal security against eviction. Security of tenancy he describes as the very mainspring of agri- cultural prosperity. Long leases are well enough, but they tempt the farmer to work out the land during the last years of the lease, and he preferred the Lincolnshire "tenant-right," which gave the tenant a claim to compensation for unexhausted improve- ments. When a Tory squire who has been a Minister talks like that, and further says agriculture must be regarded like any other commercial investment, a change in tenure cannot be far off. With a fair system of tenant-right, and land made as saleable as a watch, the squires would find the capital value of their land increased by twenty years' purchase at least.
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