92 The Landed Interest. 



agricultural population has diminished. The 

 circumstances which have led to that continue 

 in full strength. Increased facilities of locomo- 

 tion between different parts of the country, and 

 for emigration across the seas, tend more and 

 more to carry off the energetic portion of the 

 agricultural population. This has raised the 

 rate of farm wages and the cost of cultivating 

 arable land. The prosperity of the wage-earn- 

 ing class in other occupations has, at the same 

 time, vastly increased the demand for butcher's 

 meat and dairy produce, and so greatly increased 

 the returns from grass land. The natural result 

 is a gradual conversion of suitable arable land 

 to grass, and this diminution of extent is accom- 

 panied also by the introduction of labour-saving 

 machines. There is thus in both ways a ten- 

 dency to a diminution of our agricultural 

 population, the one operating in carrying off the 

 ablest to more remunerative fields of industry, 

 the other in lessening the home demand for 

 agricultural labour. It is a fact of great im- 

 portance in the consideration of this question 

 that, within the period between the census of 



