454 A FARMER'S YEAR 



I hear that the tithe rent-charge for 1899 is down to 6S/. 2s., 

 a further drop on last year's averages. The poor parsons — how 

 will they manage to live, I wonder? I wonder also if it has 

 ever struck any one how intimate is the link between the fall 

 of agriculture and the welfare of religion in this country, 

 or at least of that form of it which is represented by the 

 Church of England. It is undoubtedly to the advantage of his 

 parish that a clergyman should be able to keep up a modest 

 position ; that he should not at least be notoriously struggling 

 with debts and visibly out at elbows. Yet in eight cases out of 

 ten how is he to do so in these days, with the rates mounting 

 higher and higher, the demands upon him increasing, as they 

 do generally while time goes on, and with an income that lessens 

 like a pemi de chagrin ? If a man has a thousand a year, and it 

 comes down to seven hundred, the pinch is perceptible, but if he 

 has three hundred a year, which shrinks to under two or less, it is 

 overwhelming, and there are very many benefices in these counties 

 that do not return 300/. clear per annum. Also the losses of 

 country clergymen in these days are not confined to the wasting 

 of their tithe. In the majority of cases the glebe land is either 

 thrown on to their hands or must be re-let at a great reduction. 

 So it cannot be said that the average country rector will begin 

 the new year with prospects so rosy as this morning's daybreak. 



Later in the day the omen of a red dawn was fulfilled, 

 for the rain came down in torrents, but through it all the ploughs 

 ploughed on. With them, as the steaming horses are unyoked, 

 leaving their sharp shares buried in the half-turned furrow, ends my 

 record of farming and thinking in 1898. 



On the whole it has been a favourable year so far as climatic 

 conditions are concerned. Last winter was mild and open, the 

 spring very late, cold, and wet, but leading us on to an excellent 

 haysel ; the harvest, one of the most splendid times that has 

 happened within the memory of man. After that came drought, 

 which almost destroyed the swede crop, although the mangolds 

 stood it marvellously. At last this broke, and thenceforward the 



