wet and sunless season of 1879 which ruined many a farmer, together with excessive rain and deficient sunshine, most seriously injured the average harvests. {203} Foreign competition in wheat, imported cattle, and butchers’ meat largely increased. The price of wheat fell between 1880 and 1886 from 50_s._ to 30_s._ a qr.; between 1884 and 1887 beef fell from 80_s._ to 55_s._ per cwt.; and other produce also fell in proportion. Thousands of farmers were then ruined, and agriculture generally suffered a severe and prolonged depression, and much arable land was then laid down again as pasture, indeed some went altogether out of cultivation. Meanwhile the political false prophets were going about with their usual nostrums, and the flags of Protection and even of Bimetallism were both waved before the bewildered eyes of the British farmer, as if they were signals of salvation. § 4. THE CAUSE OF THE DEPRESSION. THE RISE IN RENT--Now it is perfectly obvious to an impartial observer of economic facts, that an industry so flourishing as English agriculture was not very many years ago, could not have suffered so severe a collapse unless there had been some great underlying cause, beside the ordinary complaints of bad harvests and foreign competition. Bad harvests are not peculiar to England, and foreign competition, however keen it may be, has first to overstep a very considerable natural margin of protection in the cost of carriage. It costs, for instance, according to that great authority Sir James Caird, 9_s._ per quarter to transport American wheat from Chicago to London. It is clear that besides these, there must have been other influences of considerable importance, to cause English agriculture to be, in spite of its apparent prosperity, in so insecure a position that it should have sunk to the depressed condition in which it even now remains. We have not to look far for one cause. It is the lack of agricultural capital.