INTRODUCTION xli 



tenants not being able to go on unless they were granted a fair 

 reduction. It was urged that the passing of the Ground Game 

 Act would afford some relief, the right of killing hares and rabbits 

 being at least a mitigation ranging from 2s. 6d. to 5$. per acre. 

 But it was not much of a concession to the farmer, for the reserva- 

 tion of winged game implied supervision, and despite thereof, 

 offences against the Game Laws increased, there being more con- 

 victions for poaching and fowl stealing than other misdemeanours, 

 excepting the Licences Acts, in rural districts. 



An Agricultural Holdings Bill for England and Scotland was 

 passed in 1883, the previous harvest not having been up to the 

 average, and prospects were dull. The price of corn had fallen 

 to 415. yd. per quarter, and in 1884 it dropped to 355. 8^. Farmers 

 could not grow corn, they said, at a profit under 405., per quarter ! 

 The Highland crofters, whose grievances were not unlike some 

 of the Irish and English tenants, in so far as they consisted of 

 demands for rental which the produce of the land would not enable 

 them to pay, and the penalty of eviction without any future means 

 of living. An additional hardship to the crofters was found in 

 the enormous extension and eager acquisition of land by the pro- 

 prietors of already existing deer-forests and tracts of country 

 devoted to sport. Two million acres in the Highlands, once de- 

 voted to pasture, over which the crofters' cattle used to roam, are 

 now entirely used for the artificial maintenance of deer in a wild 

 state. Then there has been a consolidation into large sheep-farms 

 of the superior classes of pasture which used to be grazed over by 

 the mixed sheep of the small owners. Thus the men, with know- 

 ledge of pastoral and agricultural processes, and equipped in 

 some degree with the stock and implements of husbandry, were 

 debarred from becoming substantial occupiers of small holdings 

 under lease, or to be the managers of land belonging to themselves ; 

 and the cottars and crofters were not relieved by the Commission 

 of Inquiry or resolution of Parliament in 1884. 



The small holdings in England had practically disappeared 

 from rural districts in 1885. The actual loss of arable area in the 

 interval covered from 1875 to 1895, which may be said to cover the 

 period of agricultural depression, was 2,137,000 acres, and of 

 this corn (wheat is that meant in this connection) growing 

 accounted for more than 1,900,000 acres. The increase of cattle, 

 sheep and pigs hardly accords with the extended area under grass, 

 while it represents at least one-fifth less hands employed on farms, 

 and in conjunction with the displacing of labour through the 

 introduction of machinery, reduced the labour needed on farms, 

 together with the landowners suspending improvements on their 

 estates, fully one-third. Thus the rural districts were depopulated, 

 and for what ? The bogey of protection ! 



The loss of the allotment and small-holder in rural districts 



