dead L100 per annum taken out of the agriculturist's
pocket.

Then--labour, the great agricultural _crux_. If the occupier pays
3s. per week more to seven men, that adds more than another L50 per
annum to his outgoings, to meet which you must somehow make your
acres represent another L500. Turnpikes fall in, and the roads are
repaired at the ratepayers' cost. Compulsory education--for it is
compulsory in reality, since it compels voluntary schools to be
built--comes next, and as generally the village committee mull
matters, and have to add a wing, and rebuild, and so forth, till
they get in debt, there grows up a rate which is a serious matter,
not by itself, but added to other things. Just as in great factories
they keep accounts in decimals because of the vast multitude of
little expenses which are in the aggregate serious--each decimal is
equivalent to a rusty nail or so--here on our farm threepence or
fourpence in the pound added to threepence or sixpence ditto for
voluntary Church-rate, puts an appreciable burden on the man's back.
The tightness, however, does not end here; the belt is squeezed
closer than this. No man had such long credit as the yeoman of yore
(thirty years ago is 'of yore' in our century). Butcher and baker,
grocer, tailor, draper, all gave him unlimited credit as to _time_.
As a rule, they got paid in the end; for a farmer is a fixture, and
does not have an address for his letters at one place and live in
another. But modern trade manners are different. The trader is
himself pressed. Competition galls his heel. He has to press upon
his customers, and in place of bills sent in for payment once a
year, and actual cash transfer in three, we have bills punctually
every quarter, and due notice of county court if cheques are not
sent at the half-year. So that the agriculturist wants more ready
cash; and as his returns come but once a year, he does not quite see
the fairness of having to swell other men's returns four times in
the same period. Still a step further, and a few words will suffice
to describe the increased cost of all the materials supplied by
these tradesmen. Take coals, for instance. This is a fact so patent
that it stares the world in the face. A farmer, too, nowadays has a
natural desire to live as other people in his station of life do. He
cannot reconcile himself to rafty bacon, cheese, radishes,
turnip-tops, homespun cloth, smock frocks. He cannot see why his
girls should milk the