Tinder which landed interests have collapsed. This feeling is fed 

 from many other sources, such as the covetonsness -which the 

 possession of land always engenders in the landless, or the con- 

 viction that it is impossible for the clergy to be good landlords. 

 But leaving out of sight all other sources of discontent except 

 the belief in the immunity and the apathy of the clergy, it is 

 manifest that judgment cannot safely be permitted to issue 

 against the parsons by default, that it is not only just but 

 prudent to lay the true facts before the public, and that both the 

 sufferings of the clergy and the peculiar conditions by which, as 

 agriculturists, they are hampered, are too little known or too 

 genei'ally ignored. It is with this object that the present inquiry 

 has been instituted. The investigation has been principally 

 confined to the dioceses of Peterborough, Ely, St. Albans, 

 Lincoln, and Oxford ; but the area has been considerably 

 extended by the information of well-known and experienced land 

 agents, whose wide business connections have made them 

 acquainted with other parts of the country. The result of the 

 inquiry shows that, in the first place, so far from enjoying any 

 immunity from agricultural loss, the clergy have suffered as 

 acutely as any other class ; and that, in the second place, their 

 great and self-denying efforts to meet the agricultural crisis have 

 been thwarted by impediments from which lay landlords and 

 tenants have been long relieved. They have a claim on sympathy ; 

 they have also a claim for redress. 



The prudence of raising the question can hardly be challenged. 

 Agricultural distress has reached such a point of depression 

 that it is no longer wise to conceal the sufferings of the clergy. 

 If the turning-point in the lane were reached, it might be possible 

 to keep silence ; but the turn is still out of sight. If agriculture 

 is indeed passing through the tail of the storm there is a terrible 

 sting in the tail. Wheat continues to pour into the country at a price 

 with which English farmers cannot hope to compete ; barley cannot 

 be grown with profit ; stock still shows a downward tendency ; few 

 farmers are able to make their rents. At a fat-stock market 

 held within the last fortnight in the midland counties the highest 

 prices which were realised ranged from 101. to 121. lower than 

 those of 1885 ; and while 401. was the selling price of prize animals 

 last year 301. was the largest sum paid in 1886. Money has been 

 made in inferior beasts which have turned out well ; it has 

 been lost over the higher class. On Lord Exeter's Burghley 

 estate fourteen tenants have recently given notice to quit ; 

 other Northants landlords, like the Duke of Buccleuch, Lord 

 Lilford, Sir Frederick Robinson, and Mrs. Stopford Sackville, 

 are hardly in a better position. On the heavy land districts of 

 Essex much land fell out of cultivation after the wet seasons 

 of 1870, 1880, 1881 ; most of it has since been brought back 



