42 



v.— THE RELIEF OF THE GLEBEOWNER. 



Agricultural distress has fallen upon the glebeowners with 

 exceptional severity. The extraordinary losses which they hare 

 experienced are not due to any inferiority of their land. The 

 parcels of which their glebes are composed are often extremely 

 scattered ; they are generally situated at an inconvenient 

 distance from the village. But in quality the soil is often some 

 of the best in the parish. When the Enclosure Acts were passed 

 the heavy lands, which before the geueral introduction of roots 

 and before the recent agricultural depression were most highly 

 valued, rarely fell to the lot of the i^arson. He was apportioned 

 the lighter lands which fringed the edge of the common 

 field. The parson in fact got the rind of the cheese. But 

 the rind is now worth more than the inside ; it is only the 

 light lands that make the rent. Distance and want of compact- 

 ness are thus compensated by the character of the soil. How, 

 then, are the exceptional losses of glebeowners to be explained? 

 Because glebeowners have been placed at a great disadvantage 

 in the management of their land, personally, professionally, and 

 legally. 



The clergyman is generally ignorant of rural matters. The 

 son of a country squire may be hopelessly plucked for the Army 

 or his " Little-go ;" but when he succeeds to his estate he knows 

 something of the management of landed property ; he 

 has imbibed his knowledge as it were with his mother's 

 milk. The parsou, on the other hand, may be a brilliant 

 scholar, or a profound theologian ; but he knows nothing 

 of farmiug or of farmers. When he is called to the 

 management of landed property he refreshes his memory 

 with the Qeorgics, perhaps heaves a gentle sigh of regret that he 

 had studied the " De Officiis" instead of the L'De Re Rustica," 

 and enters with a light heart on a difficult profession in which 

 science without practice is a frequent cause of ruin. He soon 

 finds that he must buy his experience, and the necessity comes 

 upon him at an age and under circumstances when he can ill 

 afford so expensive a purchase. Very often he is as unreason- 

 able as he is ignorant. Accustomed to be infallible in the 

 pulpit, he forgets that he may blunder in the farmyard. He is 

 generally too poor a man to meet energetic tenants half-way in 

 improvements. Even if he has the means he neither possesses 

 the requisite knowledge nor feels the ordinary stimulus to 

 lay out money upon the land. He does not know when to extend 

 a helping hand, or when to give a notice to quit ; he lets one 



