lose indirectly by changes of tenancy. You also have the sole right of sporting, which in this neighbourhood is a very important item in the value of a farm. If you wish to let it at anything like a decent rent you must occupy the land yourself, because the conflicting interests of agri¬ cultural and sporting tenants cannot be reconciled, and there are many farms and parts of farms in this district on which it pays much better to grow ground game than to grow corn. If prices do not materially improve, which seems hardly likely at present, I am strongly inclined to devote more and more of my worst land to game, as game ensures a certain if small return with little or no outlay, and you get rid of a lot of expense which may never be repaid in keeping up fences and buildings, and you get rid of the trouble and annoyance of struggling with bad tenants who cannot or will not carry out the agreements they have made.
After all, why should they as long as landowners can be found, and there are plenty of them, who arc forced by their inability to occupy their land themselves to let it to the highest bidder ? Agreements in many cases are now a mere form and both owners and occupiers know it. For it is evident that unless a tenant has such a pecuniary or other inducement to stay on his farm, as very many now no longer have, he cares nothing for a notice to quit, whilst the owner, knowing that if he turns out a tenant for breach of agreement he may have to farm it himself or spend a lot of money before lie can let it again, allows things to go on as ill or as well as the tenant chooses to do them.
January 17th (1900). Attended the Assessment Committee at Cirencester, postponed in consequence of the death of our vice-chairman, an old and intimate friend of mine who will be a great loss to this neighbourhood, The venerable chairman is also absent from illness, a very unusual event, for I think it is the first time in twenty years or so that I have ever found him absent, and he is now over eighty and has to drive ten miles and back to attend meetings, which may last two, three or four hours. He has done this for sixty years, probably on an average at least once a week. That means one thousand miles a year and fifty days given up to the service of the county without fee or reward, except the knowledge that he is serving his country in the only way in which he is able. It is true that we gave him a testimonial some years ago on his completion of fifty years* membership of the Board of Guardians, now converted into a District Council but consisting of the same men, and I was able to say on that occasion that I had never known, or heard of, a public body which was so entirely free from class, political or religious interest as the one over which he had so long presided.
As long as there are such men and many of them in all parts of rural England the local affairs will be conducted as they are now, not perhaps entirely without friction or individual cases of grumbling, but with absolute honesty. How different from the rural government of any other country of which I have any intimate knowledge, except perhaps Norway! Our meeting is composed of clergymen, farmers and tradesmen, and now that poor Cripps is gone I am the solitary representative of the landowners, so that I must try and attend more regularly than I have done, not because I think that the interests of landowners will be neglected in my absence,
