316 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



almost universally ruined." This class of farmers met with the 

 same misfortune in Lincolnshire. In Cheshire, " A great many 

 farmers got a considerable sum of money, and were mad to 

 lay it out in land. They purchased land at forty years' pur- 

 chase, in some instances, and borrowed probably half the 

 money," and soon after, the produce sold for so much less than 

 formerly that they could not pay the interest on the money they 

 had borrowed and were " obliged to sell their properties for 

 what they could get." In Shropshire, again, farmers paid 

 high prices for land and " borrowed money, as much as they 

 could sell the property for afterwards." These same stories 

 are repeated for Norfolk, Hampshire, Somersetshire, Berkshire, 

 and Buckinghamshire. 



Improvements do not appear to have been very generally the 

 occasion of indebtedness, but in some instances the witnesses 

 before the Select Committee gave this as an important cause. 



The provision for younger children, or the paying off of the 

 other heirs when one member of the family took the estate, 

 was often the occasion of heavy indebtedness. In Cumberland, 

 the " statesmen " had large families and " from a miscalculation 

 of their real situation " they left their children " larger fortunes 

 than they ought to have done, and saddled the oldest son with 

 the payment of a sum of money which it was impossible for 

 him to pay." This is given as an important cause of in- 

 debtedness in Nottinghamshire, Somersetshire, Berkshire, and 

 Buckinghamshire. 



Thus it would seem that in 1833 these small estates were very 

 generally encumbered. The indebtedness had been incurred 

 during the period of high prices ; and when prices fell the debt 

 was often equal to, if not greater than, the value of the land. 

 The whole net product would not, in many cases, pay the 

 interest. Where this did not force the yeomen to give up their 

 estates at once, the land usually came into the market at the 

 death of the owner, as no member of the family cared, as a 

 rule, to take up the burden of mortgaged ownership which had 

 come to be looked upon as less desirable than tenancy. This 

 fall of prices at a time when mortgages were very prevalent 



