OF AGRICULTURE. 143 



bushels, the rent amounts to 10s. in the costs of 

 production of each quarter.* But even if we 

 take only 30s. per acre of rent and taxes, and an 

 average crop of twenty-eight bushels, we still 

 have 8s. 8d. out of the sale price of each quarter 

 of wheat, which goes to the landlord and the 

 State. If it costs so much more in money to 

 grow wheat in this country, while the amount of 

 labour is so much less in this country than in 

 Russia, it is due to the very great height of the 

 land rents attained during the years 1860-1880. 

 But this growth itself was due to the facilities 

 for realising large profits on the sale of manu- 

 factured goods abroad. The false condition of 

 British rural economy, not the infertility of the 

 soil, is thus the chief cause of the Russian 

 competition. 



Twenty-five years have passed since I wrote 

 these lines the agricultural crisis provoked by 

 the competition of cheap American wheat being 

 at that time at its climax, and, I am sorry to 

 say, I must leave these lines such as they were 

 written. I do not mean, of course, that no 

 adaptation to the new conditions created by the 

 fall in the prices of wheat should have taken 



* The rents have declined since 1887, but the prices of wheat 

 also went down. It must not be forgotten that as the best acres 

 only are selected for wheat-growing, the rent for each acre 

 upon which wheat is grown must be taken higher than the 

 average rent per acre in a farm of from 200 to 300 acres. 



