176 RURAL ECONOMY OF ENGLAND. 



a notable increase in agricultural production. What a 

 rise in price did formerly, a fall will have effected at the 

 present day. This apparent contradiction is not one in 

 reality, for they will have had both a similar beginning- 

 wealth. 



England may be divided into two nearly equal bands 

 by a line running from north to south. The western 

 division being very much more wet and rainy than 

 the eastern, the cultivation of grasses there predomi- 

 nates ; in the eastern half, on the contrary, it is the 

 cereals. The fall having been less, and not so general 

 upon animal as upon cereal productions, the crisis has 

 been less felt in the western than in the other division ; 

 and it may be said that in many quarters it has not been 

 felt at all. The eastern half, in its turn, divides itself 

 into two distinct regions ; the one to the north, where 

 light soils predominate, and where the Norfolk rotation 

 reigns ; the other in the south, where argillaceous or 

 calcareous-clay lands prevail, and where the cultivation 

 of roots has made less progress. In the first, cereals not 

 being yet the chief production, the crisis, though real, has 

 been endurable ; in the second, where cereals hold the 

 first rank, it has been severe. 



Many proprietors of the west and north have been 

 able to preserve their rents intact, others have managed 

 to limit their reductions to ten and fifteen per cent. In 

 the south-east, and in the clay districts in general that 

 is to say, over about a fourth of England the reduction, 

 to be efficacious, required twenty to twenty-five per cent, 

 and in some places farmers have entirely abandoned their 

 farms. These descriptions of land were already the most 

 indifferently cultivated, the least productive of the Brit- 

 ish soil, and those which gave over an equal surface the 

 lowest rents, the lowest wages, and lowest profits. 



