DECLINE OF LANDOWNING FARMERS 213 



repeal of the corn laws in 1846 wrought no important immediate 

 results. The demand for agricultural produce was so great in 

 England that large quantities had to be supplied from abroad. 

 Some of this necessary supply had to be imported at great ex- 

 pense ; hence the prices of home productions were usually very 

 high. Tenant farmers made much money and lived in a very high 

 style ; some of them even afforded liveried coachmen. During this 

 period of prosperity farmers sometimes purchased land. A slight 

 movement in this direction to some extent counteracted the result 

 of the tendency on the part of landowning farmers to alienate 

 their estates. 



But by 1875 the foreign wheat supply had become more easily 

 accessible as well as more abundant ; and the depression which 

 followed ruined hundreds of farmers and rendered many of the 

 landlords comparatively poor. There are many phases of this 

 depression which have a peculiar interest to the agricultural econo- 

 mist, but none other could be studied with more profit than the 

 inability of the landlords and the farmers to adjust themselves 

 to the new situation. The depression has now practically passed, 

 not because prices are better, but because a new generation of 

 farmers who are willing and able to adjust themselves to the 

 conditions under which world competition has placed them have 

 taken the place of those who could not succeed without high prices. 



We are interested in this depression because of the effect it 

 had upon the few remaining farmers who owned land. In 1895 

 the Royal Commission on Agriculture sent assistant commissioners 

 into the various parts of the country to gather information con- 

 cerning the effects of the agricultural depression. Many of these 

 assistant commissioners did not report upon the landowning 

 farmers, possibly because they found no representatives of this 

 class, but others have given valuable bits of information. 



Cumberland still retained some of her statesmen in 1895, 

 but the problems of the second quarter of the century were still 

 confronting them.^ In consequence of the legacies and annuities 

 which eldest sons had to pay on the basis of the high prices which 



^ The Report by Mr. W. Fox, Parliamentary Papers, 1895, C.-7915-I, 51, 

 forms the basis of this paragraph. 



