DECLINE OF LANDOWNING FARMERS IN ENGLAND 321 



which they had stepped, at a time of life when they had expended 

 much of their vitality and all their ambition." 



In Cambridgeshire the depression proved very disastrous 

 to the farmers generally. The landowning farmers, burdened 

 with mortgages, were the first to succumb ; and those of this 

 class who remained, in 1895, were in great straits. " In several 

 districts," says Fox, " evidence was privately given me of this, 

 and in one of them a gentleman, who was in the position to 

 know the facts, stated that all the yeoman farmers there . . . 

 were heavily mortgaged." 



" We have had a good many yeomen in the County of Nor- 

 folk," said Mr. Read before the Commission in 1897, " and I 

 say that they are much the hardest hit of all. They have to 

 bear both the losses of the landlord and the losses of the tenant, 

 and there have been the most disastrous failures. A good many 

 of our farmers were told twenty-five years ago that the best 

 thing that they could do was to buy their farms, and they did 

 so, but they had not enough cash, and they had to mortgage their 

 farms. They have gone to the wall worse by far than the 

 common tenant farmers. There are a good many of our old 

 and most respected yeomen who have disappeared within the 

 last few years. I feel confident that they will almost all of 

 them go unless there is a change for the better." 



Speaking of Suffolk, Mr. Everett of the commission said, " We 

 had a great many yeomen farmers and in the intense competition 

 for land in the good times, a great many men took that course of 

 making themselves, as they thought, independent ; they bought 

 land and mortgaged it, and I should think three quarters of 

 that class of men are now stripped of every penny they had." 



During the " good times," the farmers of Wiltshire saved 

 money and many of them were able to purchase farms, but as 

 in other places, they borrowed money and their investment 

 proved disastrous. One witness cited four instances within 

 his own knowledge of farmers who bought their farms about 

 1875. Of these, two had come to grief and absconded, a third 

 had lost his farm, which was in the hands of the mortgagee, 

 while the fourth was still holding his land. 



