FARMS TO LET IN ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5267, 9 February 1878, Page 5 (Supplement)

FARMS TO LET IN ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND.

(From the Glasgow Herald..) Among the social changes and tendencies of the present time it is rather remarkable that now and for some time past ever so many farmers have given up their holdings, with the result of large breadths falling into the hands of proprietors. It is a new thing in the agriculture of the United Kingdom. It is easy to understand how an indefinite number of shops or tenements may be let in Glasgow and other towns, for this form of property may be increased to any extent, and when the supply is in excess of the 'demand, shops and houses to let is the natural result. But though houses may be multiplied, land cannot. It is a fixed quantity, and admits of no exension. On the other hand the class of farmers is always increasing. Farmers rear hoys and girls as well as stock, dairy produce, and grain crops ; and a time comes when the question is—How are the boys and girls to be disposed of, and how are they to have a start in the world ? Farmers who like their avocation, wish their sons to get farms, and that their daughters should be married to the sons of farmers. From this it comes that there are more farmers than farms ; and again, as a natural result, the price of land rises more and more. But, apparently, high-water mark has been reached at last. Up to this time, there has been competition, often beyond the bounds of prudence, for every farm that was in the market ; hut now we hear of farms to let both in England and Scotland, with hardly any competition for them. It is a new thing in British agriculture, for fifty years at least. During that long period all tho tendencies of civilisation have been to increase tho value of land all over the country. Rents have risen and fallen, and risen and fallen again ; but there was a special process operating in tile agricultural sphere to keep up the price of laud, of which wo might say a few words. Land is the great aim of successful city merchants, and with a natural and laudable ambition, they look beyond tho bounds of Glasgow, and buy landed estates out in the country. Tho price is of no moment, no impediment, to the man who has made his fortune in the city, and wishes to spend the evening of Ids days as a county magnate. It is all right, and if tho man who so transforms himolf docs not realise more than two per cent, on Lis investment, very likely he does not

wish that any of his friends or acquaintances should pity him. So much for the successful city merchant in the highest degree ; but there are others, successful so far, who also come to be seized with a sort of “ land hunger.” They cannot buy estates, but they can take farms. The practical farmer, who in the line of his ancestors has been cultivating the soil, and paying a moderate rent for it, has of late been subjected to the competition of those amateur farmers all up aud down our Scotch counties. Those farmers have unduly raised the price of laud—first, to the prejudice of the old sons of the soil ; and, secondly, to their own loss. For, as a general rule, they were never able to make ends to meet; but, on the contrary, wasted their city gains in a business which they did not understand. But, all the same, their craze or fancy told against the hereditary sons of the soil, by raising the rent of land beyond its fair commercial value. It is partly on this account that so many old farmers are now at their wits' end, while not a few, both in England and Scotland, are giving up their farms. Again, we say, it is a new thing in British agriculture. To say nothing of the remarkable rise of rent early in the century, concurrently with and because of the French wav, let ns come down to the Crimean war in 1854-5. The high prices which ruled in those years, both for grain and potatoes, operated to a rise of rent. It was then that the British farmer found the of grain prices. There has been nothing similar from that time to this, and the marvel is that shrewd farmers should have taken contracts on the assumption that the prices of those years would have been continued. They have not been continued or anything like it; and so, in the economical nature of things, farmers who took leases on the basis of the Crimean prices are now in a bad way. The descent from the “war prices” of that time has weighed heavily upon many farmers both in England and Scotland, not a few of whom have had to give up their farms. But, while the British fanner is losing heart and hope, aud giving up his farm, the American farmer, who has to pay not less for labor, has begun to send his first instalment of twelve million quarters of his surplus wheat to this country. The American farmer seems to be buoyant and prosperous, while the British farmer, under the depression of four consecutive bad aud unprofitable seasons, is giving up his farm ! Wherein lies the difference 1 So far as we can see, it is mainly in the incident of rent, of which, as a rule, the western farmer has no experience. What, then, is the practical conclusion ? A reduction of rent for one thing, aud along with this the release of farmers from the trammels of antiquated or feudal leases. To this favor it must come all over, and considerate landlords will not wait for the compulsion of the ruin of the old race of farmers.