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FARMING EXPERIENCES IN THE COTSWOLDS
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his idea of a National Agricultural Union, I saw that he was a man who was eminently fitted in some ways to inspire a national movement which should combine landowners, tenant farmers and labourers for their mutual benefit. Lord Winchilsea was so highly blessed with a personal charm, so able and eloquent a speaker, that he won my heart at once, as he did that of many others, and I determined to do all I could to support a scheme which seemed so likely to have a great future.

A council was soon formed and a prospectus embodying the aims, principles and proposed rules of the Union was circulated. Subscriptions and members poured in from all parts of England, and many men already known as local leaders in the agricultural world attended our committee meetings and promised their support. Meetings were held in all parts of England at which Lord Winchilsea’s eloquent and sympathetic speeches carried all before them. Rural councils were formed in many counties and our village associations were soon numbered by hundreds. A news¬ paper, for which Lord Winchilsea himself found the capital and of which he was himself editor, became the official organ of the Union; and for some time it really looked to me and to many others as if the Union would ultimately have great weight in political elections and still greater influ¬ ence in improving the conditions of rural life and business. But I soon began to see certain influences at work which have since gone far to check the success of the Union. In the first place we could not succeed in getting the Council of the Associated Chambers of Agriculture, who were the representatives of the tenant farmers’ and to a much smaller extent of the landowners’ interests, to amalgamate with the N.A.U. They had a number of excellent practical men of business who were not so readily carried away by Lord Winchilsea's eloquence as I was, and a secretary who would have been from his ability and experience of the greatest help to us. However well such an organisation may be started, its eventual success must depend to a great extent on the organis¬ ing powers, tact and business capacity of the secretary. Lord Winchilsea perhaps tried to do too much himself, and certainly for the first two or three years gave up his whole time and great energy to the Union, speak¬ ing at innumerable meetings and attending constantly at councils and committees. His physical strength was sorely taxed by this great amount of work, and he seemed to me too ready to listen to and to admit on our agenda the ideas of men who had unpractical fads of their own to bring before the public, and sometimes logs of their own to roll, which were allowed to divert the attention and waste the time of our council. We also found that, though a great many of the existing farmers’ associations were willing to join and support our Union, they did not wish to be swallowed up by it, and were not always thoroughly in accordance with our views as to admitting the labourers to as full a share in our councils as both Lord Winchilsea and I wished and hoped for,

We had not always realised how extremely different are the difficulties and aims of agriculturists in different parts of the kingdom. Lincolnshire, Notts and Yorkshire, where a great deal of our strength lay and where Lord Winchilsea’s personal connections and property gave him the greatest hold, were living under very different conditions to those which