EXAGGERATES OWNERS LOSSES 329 



although Scotland has escaped one or two of the worst 

 seasons which have crippled agriculture in England, notably 

 1879, Scotland has had also exceptionally bad seasonsboth for 

 crops and stock, and the fall of prices, especially in wheat 

 and potatoes, has been disastrous in some of the most highly 

 rented districts. 



The situation in Scotland would have been much worse 

 if the security of long leases had not so widely developed 

 the S3^stem of high farming. At the same time, the whole- 

 sale ruin and injustice caused by high rents when fixed for as 

 long a period as nineteen years, strikingly illustrate the defects 

 in the law as to agricultural tenures which have contributed 

 so largely to intensify depression throughout Great Britain. 



Effects of Depression on Owners. 



Again, in discussing the effects of the depression on the 

 owners of land, I think the report is fallacious in assuming 

 that land was, on the average, sold at thirty years' purchase in 

 1875, and only at eighteen years' purchase in 1895. The cal- 

 culations based on this assumption greatly exaggerate the 

 undoubtedly heavy fall in the capital value of agricultural 

 land. 



On the other hand, I dissent from the statement that the 

 average reduction of rents in the most depressed districts 

 has been 50 per cent. While it is established in evidence 

 that in many districts rents have, on individual farms, after 

 repeated changes of tenancy, been reduced from 50 to 70 or 

 80 per cent., and in some cases to nominal amounts, it is 

 obvious from the returns under Schedule A of the Income 

 Tax, which show for the annual value of "lands" a fall 

 from ;C55, 618,428 in 1875 to ^46, 317,729 in 1894, or only 

 ;^9, 300,699, or 16 per cent., that rents, on the whole, have 

 not come down to anything like the amount that would 

 seem proportionate to the ascertained decrease in the value 

 of the products of agriculture. 



I am also compelled to dissent from the reasoning in this 

 section of the report in paragraphs 83, 84, 85, which seems 

 to rest on the assumption that all sums expended by the 

 owner on land are interest bearing investments, and that 

 rent should be considered as a return on landlord's outlay 

 rather than as an assignment to the landlord of a reasonable 



