394 CONCLUSION 



Many landlords had succeeded to estates which were heavily 

 encumbered by settlements, charges and mortgages, laid on in more 

 prosperous times. They could not dispose of their property, for 

 land was a drug in the market ; rates and taxes swallowed up the 

 residue of the rents which was left from interest and charges ; the 

 so-called oMTier had become a conduit pipe between his tenants on 

 the one side, and, on the other, his family, the mortgagees, rate- 

 collectors, and tax-gatherers. Anyone who lived in the country at 

 that period can call to mind numerous famihes who had curtailed 

 their expenditure, cut down their establishments, let or closed their 

 houses, or become absentees on the continent. Among farmers, 

 arrears, bills of sale, hquidations, bankruptcies kept ever in advance 

 of reductions and remissions of rent. Their numbers diminished. ^ 

 Many were farming as bailiffs instead of as tenants, or were apphcants 

 for rehef from the Royal Agricultural Benevolent Institution. Of those 

 who remained in occupation, the most capable men, who were wide 

 iawake to every chance of profit, kept the master's eye upon their 

 1 business, and in personal expenses had cut their coats to their cloth, 

 were making farming pay ; but the majority were paying rent out 

 (of capital and holding on by their eyelids in hopes of better times. 

 Labourers, as the area of corn-growing dwindled, and the labour-bill 

 was reduced to a minimum, found employment hard to get and hard 

 to keep : thro^\^l out of work, or half employed, they crowded into 

 the towns where their El Dorado proved to be the workhouse or 

 worse. The landowner's expendable income was Httle or nothing, 

 the farmer's fixed rent an improvident speculation, the labourer's 

 wage uncertain and precarious. 



Conditions were favourable for violent change. For the moment the 

 relations between landlord and tenant were embittered. Labourers, 

 smarting under the recent defeat of their Unions, were hostile. 

 In every direction pohtical agitators were active. Insecurity 

 paralysed recovery ; it rendered chronic the collapse which disas- 

 trous seasons and foreign competition had produced. Many of the 

 ideas and theories of advanced reformers in 1888 differed little from 

 those of 1912 ; in language only have they become more precise or 

 definite. " Crude panaceas are in vogue at the present day ; wild 

 theories are promulgated for the redistribution of EngUsh land. In 

 the days of her commercial and agricultural supremacy, England 

 might safely ignore such demands for change. An ever-increasing 

 ^ See Appendix VII. " Census Returns of the Agricultural Population." 



