The Census of 1891 and Rural Depopulation. 59 
shire, are specially mentioned by the Registrar-General as con- 
taining a population of which at least 14 per cent, belonged 
to the agricultural order; and in Montgomeryshire, which on 
any method maintains an unenviable primacy, the proportion 
amounted to 21*1 percent., while in Herefordshire and Lincoln- 
shire, both of which are high in the list of English counties 
exhibiting a decrease, the proportion was over 18 per cent. 
Radnorshire, in which the proportion was the highest, amounting 
to 25'5 per cent., is third in order of decrease on columns A, I), 
and E, and fourth on columns B and C. Here, again, all the 
counties mentioned, with the exception of Cambridgeshire and 
Buckinghamshire, appear in Dr. Longstaff’s list for the last ten 
years. 
The figures, lastly, in Table V. exhibit a diminution for 
the seven English counties mentioned in Table IV. in the 
numbers of agricultural labourers during the last twenty years 
which fully corresponds with that of the aggregate class for the 
whole of the country, and exceeds the percentage given for 
1881-1891 by the Registrar-General for those purely agri- 
cultural counties to which we have just referred as specially 
distinguished in his report. 
It is impossible to resist the general tendency of this 
evidence ; and from all the indications we have now passed in 
review we may safely draw the conclusion that the Census 
of 1891 bears indisputable testimony to the reality of rural 
depopulation in certain districts, although we must be careful 
not to exaggerate its dimensions, and it does not appear to 
have increased appreciably during the last decade. Dr. Long- 
staff points out very aptly, at the conclusion of his investi- 
gations into England and Wales, that Wiltshire has still a 
density of population “equal to that of New Jersey” in 
America, “far greater than that of Connecticut, New York, 
or Pennsylvania, and double that of Ohio or Delaware.” But, 
on the other hand, while the figures which Mr. Cannan has 
extracted on the decline of urban immigration are, as we have 
seen, by no means incompatible with rural efflux, the diminution 
in the Occupations Returns of the male relatives of farmers and 
of the agricultural labourers combines with the actual decrease 
of certain rural districts to point to one conclusion, and to 
confirm a general impression. Whether the efflux can be 
arrested by wise legislation or prudent statesmanship, whether 
it has yet attained sufficient dimensions to call for any com- 
prehensive or urgent treatment of this character, are questions 
which may be hotly argued, and will be answered differently 
