POVERTY-STRICKEN RICH MEN.

Inangahua Times, Volume IX, Issue 1352, 23 January 1884, Page 2

POVERTY-STRICKEN RICH MEN.

. w Mr Archibald Forbes is writing a series of articles, entitled "London Revisited," in the Sydney Morning Herald. H& asserts that in England there is a rapidly-increasing set oi people, generally accounted rich landowning gentry, on whom narrowed circumstances are pressing very strongly. He writes as follows : — The truth is that a great social revolution is in progress among what we are accustomed to call the upper classes of Great Britain. If one excepts the condition of Scotch lards, whose lands chiefly grow, oats, and where the turnips fatten the big crosses that come up to the Loudon cattle market, aud many of whom enjoy game and sal mon -fishing rents as well, and of the Devenshire proprietors, whose estates are in immemorial "grass and all grass," landlordism all over Great Britain is to-day a must unsatisfactory and precarious profession. Deductions to the farmers at rent-audits are- now the rule rather than the exception. A great land agent told me the other day that he believed in the arable regions quite one-third of the farms are lying tenantless. This state of things,, if prolonged for any length of time, means sheer ruin to the smaller proprietor?. The bigger men will stand it longer ; but there must come a time, not far in the future, when a wholesale social revolution will take effect throughout

the* landed gentry of the country. I may give two tpyical cases : Mr has £30,000 a year, derived wholly from land ; his estates arc in throe counties- Each estate has a mansion-house on it, audit has been his p.ide to'keep each mansion-house up. Todo this involves a certain number of -.vsidential servants,, a local land steward on each property*, gardeners,, gatekeepers, foi esters, lodge gatekeepers, &c. He has a town house as •.veil. Whon he has paid his mother's jointure the interest on the mortgage his* gambiug grandfather saddled one of the properties with, the interst on the 'money borrowed to briug into settlements for the payment of his sisters' do-vries and. his younger bidtu-rs' portions, he has £20 000 a yea,, ot lie eaoouts at hi--, disposal ToKeep up nis taree country scats, pay the rent of his town mansion, behave in a proper manner in local subscriptions and local charities, and " nurse" the borough that he represents, will take at least £8000 a year more. There remains £.12,000 as his net income. But live of his largest farms are tenantless simultaneously, and thi-; loss of rental will take J22500 off the f 12,000: If he tries to farm them himself, he may lay his account with the deductions being a good deal larger. Then there comes the " rebate" of 15 per cent, in the year to the farmers who are his tenants. These look for this tiow as a matter of courseAs most of them held annually, it would seem as broad as it is long to. reduce the nominal rental by 15 percent, at once, and get rid of the solemn farce of the rebate. But he is reluc- . taut to do this, because he keeps hoping against hope that the depression is but temporary, aud that time's will mend presently ; and he knows how it is to get rents up when they havn ' been let down. Well, if this 15 per cent, were to be deducted simply fro m: the net income that remains to him after clearing scores with everybody — viz., from £6500, — it would be bad ' enough, but it would not be so bad as ' ii is But while he must pay up all the burdens to the uttermost fraction,, his mother's jointure, interest on the debt, <fee, he' must make the 13 per cent, reduction on the gross rental ; aud , the net income at his disposal shrinks to £5000 a year. On this comparative * pittance he obviously cannot cover the whole of his accustomed ground ; he is. a poor man, indeed ; with a couple of sons at Eton, and his daughter at au expensive finishing school iv Brussels, ' he is a very poor man; ior all his broad acres aud the country seats, whose catalogue occupied three lines iv Burkes " Landed Gentry." Aud | so it is that there is a bill, "To let ' and the lease to be sold," up now in \ the windows of the pleasant house in Stanhope street ; and that in the advertising columns of The Timea I and the Field you may read the „ description of a " Spacious country j mansion," which you may rent by tho year or longer, with or without the ' low ground shooting, and with the home farm, if required. . Mr can yet live in some consequence, although he and his wife are j nervous about next year, when their 5 daughter will have tb be presented, a ceremony that involves at least a I fractional season in town ; but my poor i friend Dick Thornton, to use his own ) piteous expression, is *" dead broke" , because of the times. Dead broke, I poor old fellow, and he is so the victim f of squireachical consuetude that he * can put his hand to nothing that can better his position. The rent roll of Dick's property foots up to £3300 a year. Ho has two maiden aunts, who , each have £250 a year out of the estate, His father was liberal to the juniors, and his two brothers and sisters had each £5100 of portion, the interest on which ducks Dick of £600 a year. 1 His daughter married the other day, and he had to give her a tocher of 1 £5000 ; and his second son took out 1 £2000 when he emigrated to New Zealand, aud has since had another £1000 to pay for fencing the raubits offtherunhe leases somewhere in the Lake Wakatipu country. All these deductions brought Dick's nominal income down to some £2000 a year, which taxes and public burdens, &c. lowered toa net of £1500. Now two of his best farms are vacant, which used to let for £500: and to keep tenants in the others, he has had this year — for his cold, sticky, sour land — to allow a deduction of 20 per cent. There remains to Dick an available income of just £400 a year, and a big house which needs 10 servants to keep it habitable. The house is iv a prosaic ' country, and he has spent about a fourth of his income in unavailingly advertising, it to be let. He had an idea that he could farm and did get good crops and cattle that took prizes at tho local shows,, but the balance on the home farm accounts was somehow always on the wrong side of the page. He has taken his lad away from Rugby, whence he had intended him to go to a " crammer's to Pass for Sandhurst ; but that project is now dead and buried. If the youngster does not enlist previously, he may be heard of by-and-by in the vicinity, of Lake Wakatipu ; for the present he is living with one of his father's fanners, getting some insight into sheep. Poor Dick is living over at Boulogne in lodgings — he and his. He struggles still to pay his subscription to the Windham, where it was I met him the other night, lean, haggard, and shabby, so changed from his oldv bluff front. He had come over (second class) for a couple of days to see the lawyers. Poor old Dick..

" Rough on raxs." — Clears out rats, mice, roaches, flies, ants, bed-bugs,, beetles, insects, skunks, jack-rabbite y jophers. Druggists. .Moses, Moss & ?0. . Sydney, General Agents.

?he fastest train would now appear tdbe the new Manchester London •etress, run by the Manchester, ShefM, aud Lincoln Company, via SheffiL and Grantham. The distance is ad to be 175 mile.!, and the time haa bh reduced to 3 hours and 2s minutes. pjbaMy to be still further reduced to B bars 15 minutes, which will give an arage of about s lf miles an hour. Buoho-paiba.-"— Qaick, complete ct?. all amoving Kidney, Bladder at! Urinary Diss-vises. Druggists Mies, M 033 & Co., Sydney, General Ajnta.