54 The Census o/1891 and Rural Depopulation. 
It will be remembered that the Registrar-General’s calcula- 
tions show no actual diminution, but only a less rapid growth, 
of the rural population as a whole, while the Occupations 
Returns exhibit a decrease in the total of the agricultural class 
between 1881 and 1891 amounting to less than 50,000 persons. 
This decline corresponds closely with Dr. Longstaff’s 3 per 
cent. But it is to be noted that the decrease of certain sub- 
divisions of the order represents a much higher percentage, 
ranging from 7 in the case of labourers in certain selected 
agricultural counties to 10 in that of agricultural labourers as 
an aggregate and in that of male relatives of farmers. We 
should naturally expect that, with a smaller aggregate on which 
to measure the percentage, the percentage itself would increase. 
But the increase undoubtedly points, by a posteriori evidence, to 
a conclusion to which a priori reasoning would naturally con- 
duct, and emphasises the connection of the rural efflux with 
depression in agricultural industry. 
In the first of the two decades with which he has dealt, Dr. 
Longstaff finds that the loss was greatest in the South-West, 
South Midland, and Eastern divisions, and in the latter in Wales 
and Yorkshire. Between 1871 and 1881 the rural depopulation 
in the South-West, South Midland, and Eastern registration 
divisions amounted to eight-tenths of the whole ; between 1881 
and 1891 it was less than three-tenths. On the other hand, in 
the former decade Yorkshire exhibited a trifling diminution and 
Wales an actual increase, while in the latter period Wales came 
first and Yorkshire third in the list. Taking the whole twenty 
years, eleven counties — those of Durham, Cardigan, Westmore- 
land, Montgomery, Huntingdon, Radnor, Leicester, Cumber- 
land, Cornwall, Monmouth, and Devon — have lost from a sixth 
to a tenth of their rural population, and in twenty-three other 
counties the loss has varied between a twelfth and a twentieth. 
Dr. Longstaff, like Mr. Druce in the article in this Journal to 
which we have before referred, endeavours to ascertain the con- 
nexion of this rural depopulation with arable and pastoral farming 
respectively. He carries back his analysis to the beginning of the 
century in the case of three typical corn-growing counties — those 
of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex — and of four typical grazing coun- 
ties in the South-West — those of Dorset, Devon, Wilts, and Somer- 
set. Of the fifty-six registration districts in the former group, two 
declined in the first decennium, all increased in the second, third, 
and fourth, and with 1841 to 1851 we find a diminution setting 
in, which has steadily continued. Between 1841 and 1851 four 
districts decreased ; between 1851 and 1861 thirty-eight; between 
1861 and 1871 thirty-two; between 1871 and 1881 thirty- 
