90 AGRICULTURAL INDEBTEDNESS 



burden is considered to be heavier relatively to value 

 than even in France. In Prussia the debt of all the 

 large estates together is put down at twenty-eight 

 times the land-tax, and that of medium estates at 

 eighteen times ; for small estates the figures are not 

 given. These are merely the registered mortgage 

 debts, which in Prussia only, on landed property 

 alone, were in 1894 placed at about £500,000,000, 

 and actually increased by £45,000,000 in the seven 

 years ending 1893. The increase is put down to bad 

 harvests and other losses, and the law of inherit- 

 ance. In Prussia in 1886-87 the mortgages newly 

 registered in that year alone were £31,200,000, while 

 those paid off were £24,440,000. This gives at once 

 an idea of the amount and of the rate of increase of 

 mortgage debt (Mayet), it being remembered that in 

 Europe most mortgages are of long term, those given 

 by the Land Mortgage Banks being of thirty, forty, or 

 more years. 



' In Sweden the indebtedness of peasant proprietors 

 "has increased considerably within the last twenty 

 years," and also, but in a less degree, during the pre- 

 ceding twenty years. The increase is put down to 

 the necessity for intensive cultivation and to the 

 increase in facilities for borrowing, and to the law of 

 equal inheritance, necessitating mortgages for paying 

 off shares. 



'In 1893 a discussion in the Storthing (House of 

 Representatives) of Norway gave a most instructive 

 account of Norwegian peasant indebtedness. The 

 mover of the debate, representing the richest agri- 

 cultural district in Norway, declared that the land- 

 owners were falling deeper and deeper into debt ; 

 that their mortgage debts had risen from £9,000,000 

 in 1865 to £27,800,000 in 1893, exclusive of similar 

 debts to savings-banks and merchants, while the 

 landed property was worth (according to a correction 

 by the Home Minister) about £44,000,000; hence that 



