078 Agricultural Depression at Home and Abroad. 
examined by the Commission ; while for Wales there is separate 
information of a similar character; and for our colonies and foreign 
countries evidence of various kinds has appeared in print, includ- 
ing some relating to European countries, collected by Mr. Drage 
for the Royal Commission on Labour. Some of the principal 
points in a great collection of evidence can be most conveniently 
noticed under the heads of the countries to which they severally 
relate ; but it should be understood that extreme condensation 
is necessary in order to compress the information within the 
space at my disposal. 
Great Britain. 
The time has not yet come for a complete review of the infor- 
mation collected by the Royal Commission on Agriculture, only 
a small proportion of it being published up to the date of writing. 
Two or three of the reports of Assistant Commissioners which 
first appeared relate to parts of the country in which the de- 
pression is least severe ; but even in these reports the descrip- 
tion of the condition of agriculture is a lamentable one, while 
those of Dr. Fream and Mr. Hunter Pringle, which came out 
later, are distressing in the extreme. If any districts in Eng- 
land might be supposed to have escaped agricultural depression, 
the Garstang and Fylde districts of Lancashire, visited by Mr. 
Wilson Fox, and the Cheddar-cheese district, of which Frome is 
the centre, upon which Mr. Jabez Turner has reported, would 
certainly be placed among them. The former, consisting for 
the most part of land much above the average in fertility, are 
surrounded by populous towns, so that the small farmers, who 
hold nearly all the land, have the best of markets for their 
milk, cheese, butter, vegetables, fruit, poultry, and eggs, which 
are their principal productions. Yet many of the larger farmers 
informed Mr. Fox that they had lost capital in recent years, 
while a great number of the small occupiers declared that 
their financial position was worse than that of their labourers. 
When Mr. Fox wrote, at the end of 1893, reductions of rent had 
generally ranged from 5 to 16 per cent., and in some cases up 
to 30 per cent. No doubt the partial drought of 1892 and the 
complete one of 1893 were in great measure accountable for 
this state of affairs, which may be taken as representing very 
nearly the minimum of agricultural depression in England. In 
the Glendale district of Northumberland, which Mr. Fox next 
visited, we have as favourable an example of a large-farm tract 
of country as the Garstang union is of a small-farm district, as 
the land is very fertile, and its occupiers are, or have been, 
