DECLINE OF LANDOWNING FARMERS IN ENGLAND 317 



was the immediate cause of the rapid decline in landownership 

 on the part of farmers during the twenties, thirties, and forties 

 of the nineteenth century. 



When this land came upon the market it was usually pur- 

 chased by great landlords, merchants, or manufacturers, who 

 very rarely cared to put it upon the market again ; and thus 

 the results of this temporary depression have been more perma- 

 nent than we should expect in a country where landownership 

 on a large scale does not involve so many social advantages, 

 and where systems of primogeniture and entail do not bind the 

 large estates together permanently. 



By 1836 the depression which followed the war had prac- 

 tically ceased and the period from this date until 1875 was, 

 on the whole, an era of great prosperity for English agriculture, 

 though the low returns on landed investments, lapsing life 

 leases, forced sales for settling estates, etc., were gradually 

 reducing the number of yeomen farmers decade after decade, 

 until by the close of the third quarter of the century they were 

 found only here and there ; and tenancy was the rule. In 1883 

 John Rae estimated that probably not more than 5 per cent of 

 the farmers of England owned the land which they cultivated, 

 yet during this period of prosperity farmers sometimes pur- 

 chased 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. 



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. In 1895 the Royal Commission 

 on Agriculture sent assistant commissioners into the various 

 parts of the country to gather information concerning 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," land- 

 owning farmers, in 1895, but the problems of the second quarter 



