XII THE DEPRESSION OF TRADE 215 



pasture, the annual produce is not above one-tenth of the 

 value that it was before, but it is obtained with consider- 

 ably less than one-tenth of the outlay. The consequence 

 is that it means profit to the landlord ; but it also means 

 ruin to the country.^ It is one of the causes, perhaps 

 the chief cause, of the great exodus of population that I 

 have been pointing out to you. It is estimated that for 

 every hundred acres of land thus converted from arable 

 into pasture two labourers must be discharged ; and as at 

 least a million acres of land have been so converted 

 between 1873 to 1884, that means that 20,000 labourers 

 and their families were discharged for this one cause alone. 

 Along with them, of course, went numbers of tradesmen 

 who depended on them for their support ; and mechanics 

 and others who were employed by the farmers and in the 

 villages have also left, partly for the same reason, and 

 partly because it has become more and more the custom 

 for large farmers to get all their work done and machinery 

 repaired in manufacturing centres rather than in the 

 villages by the local workmen. 



Now the amount of food lost to the country by this 

 change from arable to pasture is enormous. I have taken 

 the estimates made by two or three of the most 

 authoritative writers. They give the average produce of 

 arable land at £10 5s. per acre, and they also give the 

 average produce of pasture land at £1 9s. per acre ; 

 consequently there was a loss of £8 16s. on every acre 

 converted. That means nearly £9,000,000 of loss to the 

 country by this 1,000,000 acres that we know from official 

 returns have been changed from arable to pasture, and 

 the change is believed to be going on to this day far more 

 rapidly than ever. 



But there is another cause of rural depopulation. Just 

 now the landlords are trying to persuade the country that 

 they are very glad to let poor men have land, but hitherto 

 it is notorious that they have always refused to let them 



1 It is stated by Hume in his History of En fj/ and, "that in the 

 year 1634 Sir Anthony Roper was fined £4,00<J for depopulation, or 

 turning arable land into pasture land, under the provisions of a 

 law enacted in the reign of Henry VII." Cannot this most just law, 

 which has probably never been repealed, be put into operation now ? 



