ferent parts of the country, and for emigration across the seas, tend more and more to carry off the energetic portion of the agricultural population. This has raised the rate of farm wages and the cost of cultivating arable land. The prosperity of the wage-earning class in other occupations has, at the same time, vastly increased the demand for butchers' meat and dairy produce, and so greatly increased the returns from grass land. The natural result is a gradual conversion of suitable arable land to grass, and this diminution of extent is accompanied also by the introduction of labour-saving machines. There is thus in both ways a tendency to a diminution of our agricultural population, the one operating in carrying off the ablest to more remunerative fields of industry, the other in lessening the home demand for agricultural labour. It is a fact of great importance in the consideration of this question that, within the period between the census of 1861 and 1871, there has been a decrease of the country population in every county of England except five, and it is only in the suburban

DECREASE OF COUNTRY POPULATION.

93

counties and in the manufacturing and mining districts that an increase has taken place. Future provision for agricultural labourers' dwellings ought, therefore, to be in the direction of improvement rather than increase.

of remu

expendi

Abundant proof might easily be adduced from most parts of the country that on the main heads of agricultural improvement there should be no lack of good return. The fact that the outlay goes on without diminution, notwithstanding the great increase in the cost of labour and materials, would alone upset all reasoning, and isolated instances, to the contrary. A very Examples instructive paper on this part of the subject was nerative produced by the managing director of the Lands ture. Improvement Company. It showed a return of forty cases of outlays, not picked cases, but taken as they happened to come, with the increased rentals subsequent to the improvements. Upon an outlay in the aggregate of £195,000 there was an increased rental of £31,000. This increase had been obtained within seven to ten years. In only five instances did the increase fall short of repaying the annual charge which

redeems the principal as well as the interest. In every other case it left a profit beyond this, in many cases a large profit. On the whole, the increase is equal to a return of 15 per cent. on the expenditure, and if this is capitalised at the common estimate of thirty years' purchase of land rent, the sum expended will be found to have been increased more than fourfold. If landowners generally could reckon on anything like the average return of these forty cases, they would have the means, under the Lands Improvement Acts, of improving their estates, not only without present loss, but with a large immediate profit.

But no distinction was made or could be made in this return between that increment which arose from improvements and the general increase of rent due to the prosperity of the country, the increased value of produce, and the development of particular districts by the opening of railways and roads. Still, in one way or other the landowner in these cases has been made entirely safe.

And in the nature of things in this country such must be the case wherever reasonable

INCREASING VALUE OF Land.

95

judgment has been shown in expenditure on land improvement. Nature has given us a climate more favourable to the production of meat and milk, vegetables and grass, than that of any other European State. These, in proportion to their value, are the least costly in labour, and therefore the least affected by a rise of wages. The growing demand for them, and their consequently increasing value, exercise a constant pressure for increased production, which can still to some extent be obtained by improving the land we have. A large proportion of the improvable land under cultivation admits of this, and much of that vast tract which has hitherto been left to nature might also be profitably reclaimed for the rearing of sheep and cattle.

CHAPTER VII.

RECENT RISE IN THE VALUE OF LAND.

Great rise THERE has been, within the last twenty years,

in the value of land since

of the Corn Laws, only

partly due

to the outlay of capital in improve

ments.

a very considerable increase in the value of land the repeal in this country. The income-tax returns are most instructive on this point, and, as they show the rental of land in England, Scotland, and Ireland separately, they afford the means of comparing the rate of improvement in each country. That improvement does not seem to have begun in England till 1858, the gross annual value of "Lands" in 1857 having been returned at £50,000 less in that year than in 1846. From 1858 the rise has been progressive and continuous, and with an average increase of £470,000 a year. The rise seems to have begun somewhat earlier in Scotland, and the average yearly increase has been £82,000. The returns from Ireland cannot be distinguished prior to