DECEMBER 445 



thing, and the exercise of about as much general intelligence as 

 would be necessary to move an army corps up the Nile, a 

 moderate rent, an interest on the money invested, and possibly a 

 small living profit, if the labour and other conditions are fairly 

 favourable, and in the absence of any special ill-luck or calamity, 

 may still be wrung out of the land in our Eastern Counties. 



That is my view of the matter after a good many years of 

 experience, and I trust that others better qualified to judge may 

 not think it misleading or too sanguine. This, if I live and 

 continue to farm, I suppose I shall learn in the future, but I 

 hope even by adhering strictly to my plan of lessening the corn 

 acreage in every possible way, cultivating soundly, and increasing 

 the number and the quality of the stock to the utmost limit that we 

 can carry, to do somewhat better in future years. 



But even if I succeed in this endeavour, I fear that it will not 

 alter my estimate as to the general position of the farming interest in 

 the Eastern Counties. On every side we hear new complaints, 

 such as those that Mr. Clare Sewell Read utters in his agricultural 

 summaries and elsewhere ; whereof I quote a specimen extracted 

 from a letter written by him to the Times, as it seems to me to 

 sum up the present situation in a few sentences. ' We have to 

 pay more for labour, manures, and feeding stuffs. Yet we are 

 selling the best wheat England ever produced at 25^. per 

 quarter, wool has reached the lowest price ever recorded, and, 

 notwithstanding the poor root crop, beef hardly averages 6d. 

 per Ib. But there is another feature of the farming outlook 

 which is very sad to contemplate, and that is the decreasing 

 influence agriculture has upon Parliament or even with a friendly 

 Administration. . . . We might possibly have been spared the 

 melancholy spectacle of the President of our Board of Agriculture 

 defending and upholding one of the greatest frauds upon British 

 produce by granting a legal status to colouring margarine to 

 represent butter.' 



I know that this much respected gentleman and great agricul- 

 tural authority has been accused of taking too gloomy a view ; he has 



