DECLINE OF LANDOWNING FARMERS 215 



wretchedly impoverished. The trustees of the late Alderman 

 Thomson, who himself, if I mistake not, sprang from a statesman 

 family, bought up the farms by degrees, and there is still money 

 waiting similar investments. In no case did the investment pay 

 more than 2| per cent on the purchase money. In many cases 

 the former owners continued as the tenants ; and when the land 

 was drained and limed and proper buildings erected, these men, 

 who were formerly hard up, became well-to-do farmers. . . . The 

 Underly estate probably yields more than double the produce of 

 which the land was capable when divided and ill-managed." 1 



Writing of this same estate, Lefevre gives some additional 

 facts which are very interesting and give clearness to the picture. 

 " This great property . . . was gradually accumulated and purchased 

 under the express direction of the will of a man who, two genera- 

 tions ago, made a large fortune in trade, and whose only daughter 

 married a nobleman. The estate was made up of two hundred and 

 twenty-six different purchases, nearly all of them cases where the 

 vendors belonged to the class of yeomen farmers, or statesmen, as 

 they are called in that district, who, themselves and their ancestors, 

 had cultivated their own lands for many generations. Instead, 

 then, of two hundred and twenty-six distinct owners of land, there 

 is now a single owner. It may safely be assumed, in respect of 

 this great property, that, under the existing system of family entail 

 permissible by law, it will for generations to come remain intact 

 in a single ownership." 2 



Lincolnshire still possessed a large number of small peasant 

 proprietors and some large yeomen farmers in 1895. Many 

 farmers had bought land during the prosperous times prior to 

 1875 and had paid double the price for which it would sell after 

 the fall in prices had brought on the depression. A large pro- 

 portion of the purchase money had frequently been obtained by 

 giving a mortgage on the land, and in some cases the land had 

 fallen in value until it was worth less than the face value of the 

 mortgage. Fox says of these men, " Many . . . have already sunk, 



1 Report of Wilson Fox (Assistant Commissioner, Royal Commission of 

 Agriculture), Parliamentary Papers, 1895, C. 791 5 I. 



2 G. Shaw- Lefevre, M. P., Agrarian Tenures, p. 12. 



