FOREIGN COMPETITION 377 



at the moment when English farmers were already enfeebled by 

 their loss of capital, they were met by a staggering blow from 

 foreign competition. They were fighting against low prices as well 

 as adverse seasons. 



English farmers were, in fact, confronted with a new problem. 

 How were they to hold their own in a treacherous climate on highly 

 rented land, whose fertility required constant renewal, against 

 produce raised under more genial skies on cheaply rented soils, 

 whose virgin richness needed no fertilisers ? To a generation 

 familiar with years of a prosperity which had enabled English 

 farmers to extract more from the soil than any of their foreign 

 rivals, the changed conditions were unintelligible. The new position 

 was at first less readily understood, because the depression was 

 mainly attributed to the accident of adverse seasons, and because 

 the grazing and dairying districts had as yet escaped. Thousands 

 of tenants on corn-growing lands were unable to pay their rents. 

 In many instances they were kept afloat by the help of wealthy 

 landlords. But every landowner is not a Dives ; the majority sit 

 at the rich man's gate. In most cases there was no reduction of 

 rents. Remissions, sometimes generous, sometimes inadequate, 

 were made and renewed from time to time. Where the extreme 

 urgency of the case was imperfectly realised, many old tenants 

 were ruined. It was not till farms were relet that the necessary 

 reductions were made, and then the men who profited were new 

 occupiers. 



If any doubt still existed as to the reality of the depression, 

 especially in corn-growing districts, it was removed by the evidence 

 laid before the Duke of Richmond's Commission, which sat from 

 1879 to 1882. The Report of the Commission established, beyond 

 possibility of question, the existence of severe and acute distress, 

 and attributed its prevalence, primarily to inclement seasons, 

 secondarily to foreign competition. It was generally realised that 

 the shrinkage in the margin of profit on the staple produce of 

 agriculture was a more or less permanent condition, and that rents 

 must be readjusted. Large reductions were made between 1880 

 and 1884, and it was calculated that in England and Wales alone 

 the annual letting value of agricultural land was thus decreased by 

 5f millions. Yet in many cases the rent nominally remained at 

 the old figure. Only remissions were granted, which were uncertain 

 in amount, and therefore disheartening in effect. According to 



