CHAPTER XXI
RURAL LIFE AND RURAL PROBLEMS
October 11th (1896). Hunting in the morning at Sapperton, which I hear has again been sold, at what price does not transpire. How seldom does a property like this remain long in the same hands when once the original family connection has gone. There is now not a single property of any size adjoining my own except Church and college property which has not been sold once, twice, three or even four times since I can re¬ member, say in forty years. Fresh capital is constantly coming out of trade and into land. I have estimated that £800,000 at least, probably much more, has been so transferred from a profitable to an unprofitable business within a radius of eighty miles of my own house within the last twenty-five years. What do these investments now bring in? I should not like to estimate it at 1 per cent., but such is the inherent desire to possess land and the inherent love of country life and sport in England that there arc always fresh people ready to embark on the business of landowning and farming. And aftei all the capital is sunk, it does not go out of the country as if it was sunk in Colorado mines, villas at Nice or gaming tables at Monte Carlo, or any of the thousand and one ways of spending one’s money which now exist. The labourers, tradesmen and tax collectors of England have got it if the owners have lost it, and the country, instead of becoming a desert as it certainly would have done if it had lived on its own resources, remains smiling and outwardly prosperous.
Of the thousands of families who have struggled on and been finally beat by a combination of circumstances beyond their own control, and who have disappeared and been lost in the great crowd of unfortunates who hide their heads in our towns, what do our legislators think or seem¬ ingly care? “A lot of ignorant farmers,” they have fought their fight as doggedly as ever soldier did, and been beaten by so-called Free Trade, and their places are now filled by a different class of men who in their turn will, many of them, fall as their predecessors have done. But the late owner of Sapperton, whatever his failings may have been, was, at least, a man who believed in the land and who spent and lost his all in the land on which he was bred, and who should have deserved better of his country than many of those who throw dirt on his class.
In the afternoon, cottage rent day. I always make a point of being present in person when cottage rents, which only come once a year, are paid. Whatever advantage there may be in having an agent to collect and go between an owner and his farm tenants, who are very well able to take care of themselves and will soon let you know it if your agent is, as they think, too hard on them, it is different with cottage tenants, who take this opportunity of asking for any little repairs or additions wanted to their houses. In this they are vastly less troublesome and difficult to satisfy than the middle classes. A new range in place of an open hearth,
which has now almost disappeared in this district though wood-firing
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