As for the merits assigned to my father as landlord, I must respectfully dissent from the panegyrics so rashly bestowed on him. For all sound reasoners must concur in this, that the first duty of an owner of land is not to the occupiers to whom he leases it, but to the nation at large. It is his duty to see that the land yields to the community the utmost it can yield. In order to effect this object, a landlord should put up his farms to competition, exacting the highest rent he can possibly get from responsible competitors. Competitive examination is the enlightened order of the day, even in professions in which the best men would have qualities that defy examination. In agriculture, happily, the principle of competitive examination is not so hostile to the choice of the best man as it must be, for instance, in diplomacy, where a Talleyrand would be excluded for knowing no language but his own; and still more in the army, where promotion would be denied to an officer who, like Marlborough, could not spell. But in agriculture a landlord has only to inquire who can give the highest rent, having the largest capital, subject by the strictest penalties of law to the conditions of a lease dictated by the most scientific agriculturists under penalties fixed by the most cautious conveyancers. By this mode of procedure, recommended by the most liberal economists of our age,barring those still more liberal who deny that property in land is any property at all,by this mode of procedure, I say, a landlord does his duty to his country. He secures tenants who can produce the most to the community by their capital, tested through competitive examination in their bankers accounts and the security they can give, and through the rigidity of covenants suggested by a Liebig and reduced into law by a Chitty. But on my fathers land I see a great many tenants with little skill and less capital, ignorant of a Liebig and revolting from a Chitty, and no filial enthusiasm can induce me honestly to say that my father is a good landlord. He has preferred his affection for individuals to his duties to the community. It is not, my friends, a question whether a handful of farmers like yourselves go to the workhouse or not. It is a consumers question. Do you produce the maximum of corn to the consumer?
With respect to myself, continued the orator, warming as the cold he had engendered in his audience became more freezingly felt,with respect to myself, I do not deny that, owing to the accident of training for a very faulty and contracted course of education, I have obtained what are called honours at the University of Cambridge; but you must not regard that fact as a promise of any worth in my future passage through life. Some of the most useless personsespecially narrow-minded and bigotedhave acquired far higher honours at the University than have fallen to my lot.
I thank you no less for the civil things you have said of me and of my family; but I shall endeavour to walk to that grave to which we are all bound with a tranquil indifference as to what people may say of me in so short a journey. And the sooner, my friends, we get to our journeys end, the better our chance of escaping a great many pains, troubles, sins, and diseases. So that when I drink to your good healths, you must feel that in reality I wish you an early deliverance from the ills to which flesh is exposed, and which so generally increase with our years that good health is scarcely compatible with the decaying faculties of old age. Gentlemen, your good healths!
CHAPTER XIII
THE morning after these birthday rejoicings, Sir Peter and Lady Chillingly held a long consultation on the peculiarities of their heir, and the best mode of instilling into his mind the expediency either of entertaining more pleasing views, or at least of professing less unpopular sentiments; compatibly of course, though they did not say it, with the new ideas that were to govern his century. Having come to an agreement on this delicate subject, they went forth, arm in arm, in search of their heir. Kenelm seldom met them at breakfast. He was an early riser, and accustomed to solitary rambles before his parents were out of bed.
The worthy pair found Kenelm seated on the banks of a trout-stream that meandered through Chillingly Park, dipping his line into the water, and yawning, with apparent relief in that operation.
Does fishing amuse you, my boy? said Sir Peter, heartily.
Not in the least, sir, answered Kenelm.
Then why do you do it? asked Lady Chillingly.
Because I know nothing else that amuses me more.
Ah! that is it, said Sir Peter: the whole secret of Kenelms oddities is to be found in these words, my dear; he needs amusement. Voltaire says truly, Amusement is one of the wants of man. And if Kenelm could be amused like other people, he would be like other people.
In that case, said Kenelm, gravely, and extracting from the water a small but lively trout, which settled itself in Lady Chillinglys lap,in that case I would rather not be amused. I have no interest in the absurdities of other people. The instinct of self-preservation compels me to have some interest in my own.