324 Mr. H. Bider Haggard [May 8, 



area has largely increased, the head of stock kept upon it seems to be 

 diminishing, since arable will carry more cattle and sheep than does 

 pasture. A good deal of the ))oorer soil also is now so badly tilled 

 by an impoverished race of farmers, that it might almost as well be 

 out of cultivation. Lastly, the character of the husbandry through- 

 out England, or at least in most of the twenty-seven counties in wliich 

 I pursued my investigations, has, I believe, in the main deteriorated. 

 Of course I speak with many exceptions, but tenant farmers are not 

 what they were thirty years ago. Their capital is not so large, their 

 energy and enterprise are often less ; notwithstanding the great lall 

 in rents, their prosperity on the whole has dwindled. Farms still 

 let, at a price — indeed, the market for them is rather better than it 

 has been, for to the man with a little capital, inherited, acquired by 

 marriage, or even borrowed, the independent life of a farmer offers 

 many advantages. But few of them make more than a living, which, 

 after all. is as much as most people can expect now-a-days; and 

 some — often, it is true, through their own fault — do less than that. 

 Still the tenant of land has not been so hard hit as the owner of 

 the land, who is oppressed by tithe, taxes and death duties, all of 

 which he must meet out of an enormously lessened income. In 

 some counties his acres are now frequently let for not more 

 than a fair interest on the capital value of the improvements 

 effected on them by himself or his predecessors, that is to say, the 

 land itself is thrown in for nothing — which I take it, is something 

 smaller than that prairie-value whereof we hear so much. And all 

 this, be it remembered, has come about in a country full of the finest 

 markets in the world, that clamours for produce and imports it from 

 abroad to the value of tens of millions of pounds annually ; a country 

 moreover, where irrigation is not needed, and of which the soil, if 

 fairly treated, remains of unimpaired fertility. Could any develop- 

 ment of events be more bewildering, more inexplicable ? Yet such 

 are the facts as I have found them, and if I do not know nearly as 

 much about these matters as any other single man in England, it is 

 my own fault. 



What is the reason of this strange state of affairs to which there 

 seems to be no obvious and sufficient answer ? Is it national senility? 

 Is it that agricultural prosperity is a prerogative of young peoples ? 

 China, Egypt, and to some extent, India, seem to contradict such a 

 theory, but the East has always been different froru the West. Of 

 course, ninety-nine British farmers out of a hundred would shout 

 " Free '1 rade " with a single voice, and doubtless this is a product of 

 high civilisation which is always at war with a primitive art such as 

 agriculture. But I think that we must look further afield, since 

 even from other European countries where protection is still in force 

 agricultural prosperity seems to be slipping away. 



For instance, has not our system of large estates something to do 

 with the matter, our rooted and almost ineradicable notion that the 

 holding of land is mainly a right of the rich, to be used by them for 



