48 
The Censxis of 1891 and Rural Depopulation. 
may suggest probable explanations ; but from the nature of the 
case such solutions of the problem must necessarily be hypo- 
thetical. 
It may be, as the Registrar-General observes, that the pro- 
spects of success in an agricultural career have ceased to hold out 
attractions to an increasing number among a younger generation. 
With the first brunt of the depression the weaker farmers may 
have tended to disappear ; and, as it continued, those already 
engaged in farming may have held on for the chance of improve- 
ment, while the young have sought other occupations in pre- 
ference. Or it may be that their relatives have been unable to 
support them at home, and in these, as in other figures of the 
census, we may note traces of an anxiety to diminish expense, 
and to cut down the unpaid as well as the paid labour bill. Or 
it may be that the figures reflect a change in the direction of 
substituting smaller for larger holdings ; and the withdrawal of 
the older farmers, and the tendency caused by depression in any 
industry to produce a diminution of the numbers engaged in it, 
may have been counteracted by some such process, while it is 
natural that these smaller farmers should seek to economise in 
their household expenses and to limit the number of workers 
about the farm who are perhaps not always fully employed. 
Or, lastly, the explanation suggested in the case of the farm 
bailiffs may hold so far as regards the number of farmers, who 
may have taken the place of the bailiffs of the previous decade. 
But it is rash to assert that any one of these explanations is 
adequate or certain, and it seems more probable that the solution 
is to be found in the mingled operation of a number of such 
causes. 
IY. TnE Diminution in the Number of Agricultural 
Labourers. 
The returns of the agricultural labourers are, the Registrar- 
General states, “ never very trustworthy. There is no doubt 
that a considerable number of agricultural labourers return 
themselves simply as ‘ labourers,’ without anything to indicate 
that they are employed on farms, and these would be classified 
as general labourers. Similarly, there is good reason to believe 
that many agricultural carters and waggoners, owing to the 
imperfect way in which they state their occupation, get trans- 
ferred to the carters, carriers, and hauliers of general traffic.” It 
is impossible to determine how far these errors compensate one 
another ; and it may be the case that the spread of education and 
of general intelligence between one census and another exercises 
