_Bedfordshire_:--“Farmers are losing heart, and the land is in a much worse state than formerly.... There has been a serious inroad upon capital account during the last few years, and the land has seriously gone back in cultivation.... The condition of the land has sunk.” _Cumberland_:--“The last season has been a good one; but the present prices are not satisfactory, and the general depression in trade is now having its influence on farming.” _Essex_:--“Farmers suffering from low prices, general depression of trade, the rise in wages.... The work all round is carried on languidly, and year by year the condition of the land is becoming poorer.... A large quantity of the kind very badly farmed.” _Kent_:--“More weeds grown last year than I ever saw before.” _Monmouthshire_:--“Land going out of cultivation, stock reduced in quantity, only necessary work done.” _Northamptonshire_:--“The results of the two last seasons will not supply means for substantial improvements.” _Northumberland_:--“An immense deal of land producing nothing, I may say, simply out of cultivation.” _Oxfordshire_:--“The land is very foul and poor, partly from the continuous rains and the shortness of stock.” _Shropshire_:--“Very few farmers, if any, paying their way.... Hand-to-mouth farming.” _Sussex_:--“The land generally is not so clean or so well-cultivated as it was a few years since.” Lord Derby estimates that, with proper farming, we should obtain twice as much produce as we now get. FOOTNOTES: [36] _Fortnightly Review_, April, 1873. [37] The false economist pursues a small present good which will be followed by a great evil to come, while the true economist pursues a great good to come at the risk of a small present evil. (Political Economy--Bastiat.) [38] “I am afraid that most of us entered upon this struggle with the belief that we had some _distinct class_ interest in the question.” (Cobden.) [39] Mr. Bright is deserting his free-trade comrades, who say--“It is not only the beneficial _working of free trade that prescribes the agricultural ruin of England_: it is the great natural law of the preservation of the fittest that proclaims that, as England is not the best fitted to grow corn, she must grow corn no longer.” CHAPTER XI. QUEM JUPITER VULT PERDERE, PRIUS DEMENTAT. I think you will admit, that if a statesman, pretending to govern by rules of political economy, should make very gross, misleading statements regarding the results of a particular line of policy which he had pursued for years, such a man must be convicted of hopeless incompetency or else of gross dishonesty, either of which ought to disqualify him as an administrator; and your Free Trade statesman certainly comes under such an indictment.