I.— THE GEXERAL EFFECT UPON CLERICAL INCOMES 

 OF AGRICULTURAL DEPRESSION. 



At the present day it is impossible to regard the lot of landlords 

 who depend for their incomes solely on their rents as altogether 

 enviable. Their social position has ceased to be exceptionally 

 dignified or secure. Among the many illnsions which the 

 experience of the nineteenth century has removed, none has 

 been more rudely dispelled than this unsubstantial dream of the 

 felicity of the landlords. The idyllic squire has taken his place 

 with the Arcadian shepherd as the most unreal of poetic 

 fictions. But the public mind is unsatisfied without an ideal of 

 pastoral happiness. In the absence of other competitors the 

 country clergyman has been selected to play the part. The 

 delusion gathers strength, fostered by the misrepresentations of 

 agitators and encouraged by the silence of the clergy them- 

 selves, that the parsons during the past ten years have 

 enjoyed a comfortable shelter on the lee-side of the storm. 

 It is admitted that lay landlords have lost at least a third 

 of their rents, and tenant farmers a large portion, if not the 

 whole, of their working capital ; but it is assumed that incum- 

 bents continue to receive their revenues from land, little, if at 

 all, diminished in amount by agricultural distress. Incumbents 

 are held up to public condemnation as extortioners who squeeze 

 blood out of stones, as sleeping partners in a losing business, 

 as drones who paralyse the energies of farmers, and cripple 

 the resources of landlords, by drawing from the land, without 

 risk or anxiety, comfortable fixed incomes which can only be 

 paid out of the capital of working agriculturists. 



It is at least an open question whether the connection of the 

 clergy with the land is desirable in the best interests both of the 

 Church and of the nation. Life tenancies and fixed money pay- 

 ments charged upon the land are necessarily incumbrances to 

 agi'iculture. On the advantages or inconveniences of rent- 

 charges or glebe lands I shall have something to say hereafter ; 

 nor is it my present purpose to discuss the amount of truth 

 contained in the complaint against clerical landlords. The 

 point upon which I am now insisting is that the connection of 

 the clergy with the land has created a widespread discontent, 

 and that this discontent is in a large measure due to the 

 impression that the clergy have neither borne their fair share of 

 agricultural distress, nor done their utmost to raise the burdens 



