50 A FARMER'S YEAR 



I doubt even if it returns in net profit more than a third of what 

 it produced thirty years ago. . Indeed, in some ways its case is 

 particularly unfortunate, seeing that it is purely agricultural in 

 character, and being, as I have said, dispersed, brings in nothing 

 in the way of shooting rents, on which nowadays so many landlords 

 are compelled to exist, together with the proceeds of the letting 

 of the Hall, if they are fortunate enough to find some successful 

 South African or business man to hire the mansion house. 



In truth, few people, except those who are more or less behind 

 the scenes, know the straits to which the owners of land, and 

 especially of entailed land, have been put of late years, at any 

 rate in East Anglia. Even if they are totally unencumbered, 

 most of such properties barely produce enough to pay outgoings 

 and keep up ' the place ' upon a very modest scale. And if they 

 are encumbered, as is the case in eight out of ten of them, either 

 by mortgages or with jointures and charges in favour of younger 

 children executed on a scale of liberality dictated by prosperous 

 times, then the position is bad indeed. In nearly every instance 

 their history is the same — a long and pitiful struggle on the part of 

 the sinking family, then at last foreclosure, ruin, and sale at any 

 sacrifice. Who does not know cases of parishes where the property 

 has been held for centuries by a single family ? But long as their 

 day may be, at length it comes to an end, and the lands which 

 they owned from father to son for so many generations, the home 

 that their forefathers built and the woods which they planted, are 

 put up to auction and sold for whatever they will fetch. Well, as 

 it has been with them, so in the fulness of appointed time it shall 

 be with those who supplant them, for against this ultimate fate 

 the hoarding of moneys and the laying of field to field are no 

 sure defence. 



Soon or late the stock, like the individual, must decay and 

 vanish, and no doubt it is all for the good of the State that the 

 bankrupt family should be replaced in due season by the family 

 with a large bank balance. Yet to my mind there is something 

 infinitely pathetic about the process— this sad sequence of the death 



