o one knows what is
or what is not mortgaged. You see a flock of sheep on a farm, but you do
not know to whom they belong. You see the cattle in the meadow, but you do
not know who has a lien upon them. You see the farmer upon his
thoroughbred, but you do not know to whom in reality the horse belongs. It
is all loans and debt. The vendors of artificial manure are said not to be
averse sometimes to make an advance on reasonable terms to those
enterprising and deserving farmers who grow so many tons of roots, and win
the silver cups, and so on, for the hugest mangold grown with their
particular manure. The proprietors of the milk-walks in London are said to
advance money to the struggling dairymen who send them their milk. And
latterly the worst of usurers have found out the farmers--_i.e._ the men
who advance on bills of sale of furniture, and sell up the wretched client
who does not pay to the hour. Upon such bills of sale English farmers have
been borrowing money, and with the usual disastrous results. In fact, till
the disastrous results became so conspicuous, no one guessed that the
farmer had descended so far. Yet, it is a fact, and a sad one.

All the while the tradespeople of the market-towns--the very people who
have made the loudest outcry about the depression and the losses they have
sustained--these very people have been pressing their goods upon the
farmers, whom they must have known were many of them hardly able to pay
their rents. Those who have not seen it cannot imagine what a struggle and
competition has been going on in little places where one would think the
very word was unknown, just to persuade the farmer and the farmer's family
to accept credit. But there is another side to it. The same tradesman who
to-day begs--positively begs--the farmer to take his goods on any terms,
in six months' time sends his bill, and, if it be not paid immediately,
puts the County Court machinery in motion.

Now this to the old-fashioned farmer is a very bitter thing. He has never
had the least experience of the County Court; his family never were sued
for debt since they can remember. They have always been used to a year's
credit at least--often two, and even three. To be threatened with public
exposure in the County Court because a little matter of five pounds ten is
not settled instantly is bitter indeed. And to be sued so arbitrarily by
the very tradesman who almost stuffed his goods down their throats is more
bitter