554 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The London " Telegraph," of March 26, 

 1881, as cited by several American journals, 

 said that, according to a correspondent of a 

 provincial contemporary, " the depression in 

 the agricultural districts is fully as great as 

 it was represented by many of the speakers 

 in the debate in the House of Commons on 

 Wednesday. . . . Thousands of acres," it 

 said, " are lying unproductive, because 

 without tenants, in various parts of Eng- 

 land ; and a clergyman, writing from Not- 

 tinghamshire, gives a doleful account of 

 affairs in that district. There seems, he 

 says, to be a better state of things in 

 towns than in the country. Here general 

 bankruptcy seems imminent. Hundreds of 

 farms are to be let and few farmers seem 

 to have any capital left to take them." 

 No reform of more urgent interest could 

 possibly be taken in hand by any ministry 

 than the raising of British agriculture from 

 its present drooping condition. 



Under date of January 10, 1881, consular 

 clerk Charles F. Thirion, of Liverpool, re- 

 ported to the State Department some facts 

 concerning English agriculture. The com- 

 parisons, when not stated otherwise, are 

 between 1870 and 1879. The report shows 

 a decrease of arable area, 33 per cent ; of 

 corn land, 3'1 per cent; of wheat land, 163 

 per cent ; of barley land, 138 per cent ; 

 of oat land, 4 - 4 per cent ; a comparison of 

 1879 with 1874 shows a decrease in the 

 number of sheep of 1,414,000, a little more 

 than 7 per cent. 



The Chicago "Tribune" of June 21, 



1881, reprinted from the New York " Trib- 

 une " an article upon English estates. In 

 that article the " Saturday Review " is 

 quoted as saying, "A state of things has 

 undoubtedly existed for some time, and still 

 exists, which justly awakens great anxiety 

 for the future of the country, and profound 

 sympathy for the sufferers. ". . . The adver- 

 tisements in the London ' Times ' bear elo- 

 quent testimony to this state of things. 

 Columns are filled with notices of old coun- 

 try residences, broad demesnes, wooded 

 parks, and snug country-houses to be sold. 



. . . Ninety-five per cent of the small es- 

 tates are mortgaged, often for one third or 

 two thirds of their value." 



The New York " Tribune " represents 

 protective ideas the other two papers are 

 free-traders. 



A telegram from "Washington to the St. 

 Louis " Globe-Democrat," dated August 1, 



1882, stated that a communication had been 

 received at the State Department from the 

 consul at Liege. As reported by the tele- 

 gram, that communication contained this 

 summary : " In one year, the falling off in 

 English agriculture was 42 per cent ; for 

 six consecutive years it was 20 per cent." 



The " Globe-Democrat " is recognized as 

 a protective organ of a very conservative type. 



The Chicago " Inter-Ocean " (protec- 

 tion) of September 27, 1889, reprints this 



excerpt from the London " World " : " An 

 example of the ruinous depreciation of agri- 

 cultural land in Lincolnshire was recently 

 afforded when a farm with houses and 

 buildings, in the neighborhood of Alford, 

 was offered for sale, and the highest bid was 

 2,100, although the property cost 6,700 

 eighteen years ago, and a considerable sum 

 has since been expended in improvements." 

 The same Chicago journal quotes from the 

 London " Times " that " fifty per cent of the 

 dock laborers, including perhaps the perma- 

 nent men, are agricultural laborers in point 

 of origin." 



The startling likeness of the two pictures 

 must be remarked. The one is fuller, 

 decked off with more rhetoric, than the 

 other, but the essential features are the 

 same : the heavy mortgages ; the deprecia- 

 tion in value to one third of the cost; la- 

 borers abandoning the farms for town and 

 city ; the abandoned (at least uncultivated) 

 lands ; unprofitable farming ; decrease in 

 productions and of sheep. I have given the 

 character of my witnesses, when known. If 

 Mr. Benton had admitted that his principal 

 witness on the wool question, Hon. John E. 

 Russell, was a free-trader and interested in 

 free wool (which I understand to be facts), 

 the value of his " opinion " would be heav- 

 ily discounted. The pertinent question that 

 must arise here is, If the protective tariff 

 of the United States has destroyed the 

 agricultural interests of this nation, did the 

 free-trade policy of Great Britain cause the 

 great depression in the agriculture of that 

 nation ? In other words, does agriculture 

 prosper any more under free trade than 

 under protection ? M. B. C. True. 



Edgab, Neb., December 1, 1SS9. 



THE TEST OF INSANITY. 

 Editor Popular Science Monthly : 



Some parts of the paper by Dr. Sir James 

 Crichton-Browne, in the November number 

 of your journal, are open to serious criti- 

 cism. I refer especially to his remarks "on 

 the insufficiency of the definition or test of 

 insanity laid down by British and Ameri- 

 can courts, and on an amended test which 

 would commend itself to medical experi- 

 ence." 



It is admitted by the learned writer that 

 the accepted legal test a knowledge of right 

 and wrong in reference to the criminal act 

 is satisfactory in most cases ; but he holds 

 that there are certain morbid states of the 

 emotions and will which constitute insanity, 

 although connected with a sound intel- 

 lect. Now, the vast majority of medical 

 men with experience of the insane have no 

 knowledge of such cases. For myself, I 

 have never seen a case of this kind in the 

 examination of several thousand lunatics, 

 and I have never heard of any mark by 

 which these can be distinguished from cases 

 of vice and crime. Dr. Crichton-Browne 



