RENTS NOT REDUCED SOON ENOUGH 99 



however excessive or unjust. This power has, it is 

 alleged, been used in the case of tenants who made use 

 of the Ground Game Act, or in other ways put them- 

 selves in conflict with the owner or agent. 



The relative advantage to agriculture of a permanent 

 reduction of rent is roughly shown in the case of Lord 

 Sefton's tenants, who preferred a 5 per cent, reduction to 

 10 per cent, remissions. 



In the last six or seven years, as depression has 

 deepened, the obvious advantage to landlords as well as 

 tenants of obtaining a reduction in the assessments of 

 farms has greatly stimulated owners and agents to turn 

 abatements into permanent reductions. But this process 

 has developed slowly, and cannot as yet be said to be 

 general. 



The evidence is practically unanimous that rents 

 did not go down soon enough. There were in many 

 counties large remissions of rent in 1879 and 1880, but 

 the heavy remissions and reductions everywhere range 

 in date from 1882 to 1887, and even later. Essex 

 farmers were in trouble several years before 1879, but 

 from estate accounts given in Mr Pringle's report the 

 gross rent, and, even with the remissions, the net rent 

 does not go down substantially in most cases till 1884. 

 while from the farm accounts of tenants the first heavy 

 drop in rents would seem to have been in 1886 and 

 1887. And it appears from his report that great numbers 

 of tenants had been ruined, and frequent and sweeping 

 changes of tenancy had occurred before the heavy 

 reductions were made. The estates held in Essex by 

 Guy's Hospital have dropped in rental from i^ 12,883 to 

 £6yyi, but the drop in 1879-80 was trifling, and it was 

 not till 1885 and 1886 that a substantial fall came. 

 On their- Lincolnshire estates, rents of 49s an acre in 

 1879 did not fall below 40s till 1883, and had not in 

 1893 fallen below 33s 6d, a higher rent for the same 

 land than before the corn laws. 



A Scotch witness gives the probable explanation of 

 this : — " Many farmers submitted to severe losses on the 

 faith that possibly better times might come, and a large 



