92 THE LANDED INTEREST. 



ferent parts of the country, and for emigration 

 across the seas, tend more and more to carry 

 off the energetic portion of the agricultural 

 population. This has raised the rate of farm 

 wages and the cost of cultivating arable land. 

 The prosperity of the wage-earning class in 

 other occupations has, at the same time, vastly 

 increased the demand for butchers' meat and 

 dairy produce, and so greatly increased the 

 returns from grass land. The natural result is 

 a gradual conversion of suitable arable land to 

 grass, and this diminution of extent is accom- 

 panied also by the introduction of labour-saving 

 machines. There is thus in both ways a ten- 

 dency to a diminution of our agricultural 

 population, the one operating in carrying off the 

 ablest to more remunerative fields of industry, 

 the other in lessening the home demand for 

 agricultural labour. It is a fact of great im- 

 portance in the consideration of this question 

 that, within the period between the census of 

 1 86 1 and 1871, there has been a decrease of the 

 country population in every county of England 

 except five, and it is only in the suburban 



