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CHAPTER XI. 



AGRICULTURAL DEPRESSION, 1873 TO 1887. 



The causes of the present as contrasted with pi-evious 

 depression are partly new and partly old. The sketch 

 which has been given of agricultural progress shows that 

 a succession of bad seasons or a revolution in the science of 

 farming have produced widespread distress and necessitated 

 changes of front which can only be effected with heavy 

 loss. But the new element now for the first time present 

 is foreign competition. 



Though the circumstances are partially new, most of 

 the literature on the subject is old. A large class of 

 persons have always doubted the reality of farmers' troubles. 

 In 1651 Blith said that the chief cause of the depression 

 was the 'high stomachs' of the farmer. In 1816 people 

 argued that if farmers drank sound beer instead of sour 

 claret, and their wives returned from the piano to the 

 dairy, they would still be wealthy. It was reserved for an 

 imaginative poet in 1801 to charge them with soaking five- 

 pound notes instead of rusks in their port wine. Then, as 

 now, the complaint was heard that fundholders escaped 

 taxation. Why, asks a pamphleteer of 1822, should land- 

 owners, who only get 3^ per cent, for their purchase, while 

 ' moneyed men ' obtain 5 per cent., be despoiled of a third of 

 their income by a taxation which the moneyed interest 

 escapes ? Then, as now, the sufferers were not silent. The 



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