CONTENTS-Contd. LIST OF TABLES-Contd. X.-Summary of the Results of the Depression, showing the Rental XI.-Arrears Outstanding at the close of successive Years, together with the Increase or Decrease during the Years 1875-76 to 1890 ... 24 XII.-Rental, Abatements, and Increase or Decrease of Arrears for suc- XIII-Abatements made on the Chief Estates, with reference to the Rack Rented Farms for successive Years, 1876-77-90 XIV.-Arrears Outstanding at the close of successive Years, 1875-76-90, on the Chief Estates, with reference to the Rack Rented Farms 28 XV.-Abatements made in successive Years, 1876-77-90, on the different Holdings of the Largest Estate XVI. Arrears Outstanding in successive Years, 1875-76-90 on the same XVII-Rental, Abatements, and Increase or Decrease of Arrears for suc- cessive Years, 1876-77-90, for the same Estate XVIII.—Rental, Miscellaneous Receipts, Abatements, Increase or Decrease of Arrears, Rates, &c., and Charge for Debt Incurred for Im- provements for the same, 1877-78, 1879-80, and 1890................ XIX.-Expenditure on Repairs on the College Estates for successive FOR Some time the agricultural industry of this country has been depressed; and, as year by year has gone by, the prospect, instead of becoming brighter, has only seemed to grow more and more gloomy. But during the last year or two a feeling of reviving confidence has begun, gradually and intermittently, to spread among the agricultural classes, and the opinion is now widely entertained that the depression has finally reached, if it has not already passed, its lowest point. The present time, therefore, would seem to be opportune for endeavouring to trace the course of the depression, to gauge its intensity, and to investigate its results; and such an endeavour will be made in the following paper. The work has already been executed on a large scale by competent authorities, and it is by comparison only a modest enterprise which is here essayed. It is to exhibit the course and to measure the effects of the depression, as illustrated by the accounts of an Oxford college. There are, however, some grounds for believing that even this limited endeavour, however imperfectly it may be fulfilled, m not prove entirely useless. In some respects, at any rate, out has occurred within these comparatively narrow limits mspects. of a college are often dispersed in various parts of the country, as they are generally the gifts of many benefactors at different times; and, although this is perhaps to a less degree the case with the college with which this paper is concerned, and its chief estates are, with one important exception, situated at no great distance from Oxford itself, it is nevertheless an owner of property in eleven' counties. A college, therefore, can hardly have been fortunate enough to escape by the lucky accident of the peculiar situation of its property the effects of agricultural depression; and yet it may well have suffered more seriously in some districts and some classes of its property than in others, and its estates may be regarded as tolerably representative of the general results of the changing conditions of agriculture in the country as a whole. The particular college with which we are now to deal may be considered as typical on another ground also; for, in respect of the revenue derived from its corporate property, and of the acreage of its estates, it may be said to occupy a position intermediate between the richest and the poorest colleges in the University of Oxford. Perhaps, however, the chief reason for hoping that the information contained in this paper may not be destitute of value is that the accounts on which it is based have been, with minor exceptions, kept according to an uniform system, and the estates to which they relate have undergone few changes during the period which it is proposed to bring under review. The accounts of the Oxford colleges have, like those of the colleges at Cambridge, been published year by year for some little time, and they contain important and interesting material for the statistical student. But they necessarily relate to totals rather than to the items of which those totals are composed, and there is reason for believing that the different colleges follow different methods of classification and arrangement in arriving at the totals presented under the various headings of the published accounts. Although, therefore, the comparison between the accounts of the same college in different years may be made with some confidence, the comparison of the accounts of one college with those of another, and the addition of the totals of the various items, as they appear under the same head in the accounts of different colleges, so as to form a grand total, may be vitiated by a difference in the methods of arriving at those totals which have been adopted by different colleges. Examples might be furnished in illustration, but I will now content myself with entering a caution against any indiscriminate use of the es given in these published accounts. The accounts, on the hand, of a single college, which will be taken as the basis of IX.ne of these counties it is only an owner of tithe, and in another it minal rent from the small piece of land in its possession. the present paper, are free from such a defect. They have been kept in accordance with an uniform system, and they relate to estates which, with few exceptions, have remained unaltered during the period under review. They afford the means of discovering the way in which the totals given in the published accounts are made up; and, while they furnish information which has not hitherto been generally published, it may, I hope, without any breach of confidence, be submitted to the Royal Statistical Society in the particular shape in which it will be presented in this paper. 66 II.-The Period of Time selected for Investigation. The period of time, which it will be convenient to bring under review, will embrace the fifteen years extending from 1876 to 1890. This period will, I think, adequately comprise the duration of the agricultural depression. It will include the effects, at any rate, of its commencement, and it may fairly be hoped that its termination will not be found to have been excluded. The well-known agricultural writer, Mr. W. E. Bear, writing in 1888 on "The British "Farmer and his Competitors," stated that the country had then "been suffering from agricultural depression in its acute stage for "fully nine years." "For some time before 1879," he added, "there were complaints of the unremunerativeness of farming; but in that year veritable disaster was experienced, and although the failure of crops has never been quite as complete since, lean "harvests have been more common than fat ones, and prices have "been generally falling." The statistics employed by him in the course of his little book commenced in many cases with the year 1877; and, by selecting 1876 as our terminus à quo, we may reasonably be confident, in the case of the estates with which we are dealing, that we have gone back sufficiently far to discover the state of affairs prior to the changes caused by the depression. If anything, until 1878 the rental of the college had tended slightly in an upward direction as compared with 1874, which may perhaps be regarded as the true beginning of the series of bad seasons and of losses in farming, and the arrears had decreased in amount; and, by commencing with the year 1876, we avoid the disturbing effects of some changes in the acreage and the conditions of tenure of some of the land which we shall have to consider. For similar reasons the year 1890 may be taken as the terminus ad quem. It is the last year for which the college accounts are as yet completed; and it is generally agreed in agricultural circles that farmers were then beginning to entertain, and not without reason, more decidedly cheerful views of their future prospects. The "Statist" newspaper, indeed, as far back as 1887, in its review of the year 1886, noticed a "recovery" in the price of wheat, and remarked that this recovery showed that "at last, "after many years of depression, the usual circumstances which bring about improvement in such cases are beginning to be present." But the review of the following year was unfavourable in tone. The average price of wheat had fallen to nearly 288. a quarter, and a lower quotation than any recorded in the present century before this year had been reached; and the agricultural industry was, the newspaper stated, "still in a very "deplorable state." By 1889, however, signs of improvement were more decidedly manifest, and the improvement has since continued. The "Economist," reviewing the trading and commercial history of 1889, declared that there was sufficient evidence to "indicate that our farmers, as a whole, fared better in 1889 "than they had done for many years before." And of 1890 the same newspaper remarked that " one satisfactory feature of the "year's business" was that "our farmers fared better than they "had done for many years." "It is significant," it added, "of an improved state of things that the demand for farms was "better last year than it had been for a long time before." The accounts, which we are about to examine, tend to confirm this encouraging view, and show that it is not too sanguine a supposition to believe that the agricultural industry of the country has certainly reached, if it has not passed, the lowest point of depression; that landlords and farmers have adjusted themselves to the altered conditions; and that, if a decided recovery from the fall of prices is an unreasonable expectation, a further fall is now, at any rate, improbable. Let us then proceed to consider the course of the depression as shown in the accounts between 1876 and 1890 of the college of which I have had the honour for the last few years to be treasurer. And first the situation, extent, and character of tenure of the various estates should be briefly indicated. III.-Description of the College Estates. The total acreage of the landed estates belonging to Oriel College, Oxford, on 1st January, 1872, was thus stated in the report of the Universities Commission (1874):— 2 By an error of arithmetic reckoned by the Commissioners as 5,050a. 2г. 33p. This return was defective in consequence of some clerical errors and some omissions, and the quantities differed in the case of several of the separate estates from those which were subsequently ascertained by more accurate surveys. The return, as amended in 1881 by the insertion of the omissions and the substitution of the corrected quantities, showed the acreage of the estates at the time of the Commission to be as follows: In 1874 the college sold part of one of its estates, and in the early months of 1876 it disposed entirely of another, while it added in the former year to a third by the purchase of some 100 acres. At the beginning, therefore, of the period under review in this paper the total acreage would stand nearly as follows: The Between 1876 and 1890 some further changes occurred. college sold portions of two estates, and it added by purchase to three. It also acquired for its full corporate use an additional small estate; and, if these changes alone are taken into account, the total acreage in 1890 would stand as under: But in the interval between 1876 and 1890 additional exactitude in the measurement of the quantities contained in the various estates was secured, in a large degree in consequence of the publication of the sheets of the Ordnance Survey, and the total |