t3o A FARMER'S YEAR 



men only too often keep up the game till beggary overtakes them, 

 when they adjourn to the workhouse or live upon the charity of 

 their friends. The larger farmers struggle forward from Michaelmas 

 to Michaelmas, and at last take refuge in a cottage, or, if they are 

 fortunate, find a position as steward upon some estate. The land- 

 lords with farms upon their hands work them with capital borrowed 

 at high interest from the bank, till they can let them upon any terms 

 to any sort of tenant. Unless they have private means to draw on, 

 or are able to earn money, into their end it is best not to inquire ; 

 they sink and sink until they vanish beneath the surface of the great 

 sea of English society, and their ancient homes and accustomed 

 place are filled by the successful speculator or the South African 

 millionaire. 



This is the result of Free Trade, which if up to the present it 

 has brought a flush of prosperity to the people as a whole, has taken 

 away the living of those classes that exist by the land, at any rate 

 in our Eastern Counties. When that principle was introduced 

 ruin to agriculture was foretold, but at first, owing to a variety of 

 circumstances, it did not fall. Yet disaster was only postponed ; 

 now it has come, and whether the land and those who live on it 

 will survive is more than I or anyone else can say. The truth is 

 that the matter is no longer of pressing interest to the British 

 nation. The British nation lives by trade and fills itself with the 

 cheap food products of foreign countries ; the fruit of the fields 

 around its cities is of little weight to it one way or the other. If 

 all England went out of cultivation to-morrow, I doubt whether it 

 would make any material difference to the consumer the neces- 

 saries of life would still pour in from abroad. What would 

 happen if a state of affairs should arise under which corn and 

 other food could not be freely imported is another matter. When 

 it does arise, no doubt the town-bred British Public, and the 

 Governments which live to do what they conceive to be the will of 

 that public, will give their earnest attention to the problem, perhaps 

 too late. Meanwhile, all is doubtless as it should be, and, as there is 

 not the slightest prospect of redress, we poor farmers must bow our 



