into some sort of occupation ; but it is often let for such 

 grazing value as it produces, or is held on at nominal 

 rents by tenants who are only bound to continue to cultivate 

 and to pay the outgoings. The area of corn cultivation, 

 if the price of horses affords any indication, is rapidly 

 contracting. Farm horses, which in 1882 fetched 351. a 

 piece, arc now sold for 101. In some portions of the 

 country farmers are leaving the sinking ship at any sacrifice, 

 throwing up their farms, and realising what they can get. Six 

 working horses, old, bat serviceable and good, were offered six 

 weeks since in Peterborough market at 301. As yet agricul- 

 tural labourers have suffered comparatively little. But farmers 

 can no longer afford to employ an adequate amount of labour. 

 If nothing is done to relieve depression, hundreds of agricultural 

 labourers will this winter be turned off to swell the starving and 

 desperate mass of the unemployed which fringes the borders of 

 our glittering civilisation. Meanwhile all the profits of agricul- 

 ture are passing into the hands of the butchers and the bakers. 

 The price paid by the consumer is wholly disproportionate to 

 the sum paid to the producer. It was suggested to me by a 

 gentleman of considerable agricultural experience that if 

 the Government fixed week by week the price of bread 

 and meat on a fluctuating scale determined by the selling 

 price of wheat and stock, together with an allowance of 

 a fair profit for middlemen, they might not only reduce the 

 price of meat and of bread for the consumers, but impose a 

 small import duty on foreign produce. Agriculture has reached 

 so low a level in this country that in many districts it is almost 

 au expiring industry. Under such circumstances the most rigid 

 economists might defend the imposition of an import duty, 

 provided that it can be accompanied by a cheapened loaf and a 

 cheapened joint. 



The present state of agriculture is a formidable danger to the 

 property of the clergy. In moments of popular panic somebody 

 is always hanged, and the victim who is dragged to the lantern is 

 generally innocent. Necessity knows no laws ; in stormy times 

 the Church is a convenient Jonah for all political parties. Too 

 many statesmen appear to think that the violation of established 

 and fundamental laws is an evil of less magnitude than a 

 political inconsistency or an avowed change of opinion. Men 

 will drive a coach-and-four through a hundred Acts of Parliament 

 sooner than bate one jot of their economical theories. It may 

 be at once conceded that a pressure so severe as the present 

 agricultural distress demands that the land should be as free as 

 possible from all incumbrances. But until the clergy are placed 

 in the same position as lay landlords and lay tenants, they have 

 fiot received fair play or enjoyed the same opportunities of 



