Agricultural Depression at Home and Abroad. 679 
men of considerable capital, and are skilful farmers as a rule. 
There, however, depression has been felt since 1879, and it has 
been only by means of great and timely concessions on the part 
of landlords that the farmers have been able to hold on. Reduc- 
tions of 20 to 30 per cent, in rents have been common, and on 
one estate the decline has been 50 per cent. 
Mr. Turner found depression severe in the arable portions of 
the Frome district, and less marked in relation to the cheese- 
farms, although holders of the latter suffered in 1892 and 1893. 
Rents he found had been generally reduced by 25 to 40 per cent. 
In the district of Stratford-on-Avon the same Assistant Commis- 
sioner found the state of agriculture much worse than in his first 
district, rents having fallen 25 to 60 per cent., while changes of 
tenancy had been exceedingly numerous, and many farms were 
in the hands of their owners. If Mr. Turner had collected as 
many details as some of his fellow Assistant Commissioners have 
given, the i-eport on this district would probably have been a 
very distressing one. 
A bad picture of the state of affairs in the sheep-breeding 
and corn-growing district of Andover, in Hampshire, presented 
by Dr. Fream, is all the more remarkable on account of the fact 
that sheep had not long ceased to be remunerative at the time 
of his visit. This is a significant point, because it indicates that 
it is not enough, in an arable district, for live-stock to pay fairly, 
as a rule, taking a long series of years, if there is a loss on corn- 
growing. Sheep had paid fairly up to 1891, and yet, in 1893, 
depression in the Andover district was as general as it was intense. 
Reductions of rent up to 60 per cent., with temporary remissions 
besides in some years, have been allowed, and in some cases land 
was let at only a trifle over the tithe which the landlord had to 
pay. Yet large tracts of land had fallen into the owners’ hands, 
and a good deal had gone out of cultivation, being used as sheep- 
runs. No farm on which rent had not been reduced came under 
the notice of the Assistant Commissioner ; but he heard of many 
cases in which the rents, though reduced greatly, had not been 
paid for years. In the Maidstone district of Kent, apart from the 
hop and fruit farms, Dr. Fream found the state of affairs about 
as bad as it was in Hampshire. 
In the Isle of Axholm, once the paradise of peasant pro- 
prietors, Mr. Hunter Pringle declares that in 90 per cent, of the 
cases in which the small holdings were mortgaged from fifteen 
to twenty years ago the owners have been either ruined and sold 
up, or are struggling on in a hopeless condition at the mercy of 
the mortgagors. The owners of holdings, as a class, he further 
declares, are much worse off than the tenants, and this shows 
