is, however, the exuberance of its vegetation, and the rich luxuriant appearance of its lower and far most extensive portion. It owes this distinction partly to nature and partly to art. The humidity and mildness of the climate maintain the fields in a constant state of verdure; in winter they are seldom covered with snow or blighted by long-continued frosts, and in summer they are rarely withered and parched by droughts. In this respect England is as superior to the finest countries of continental Europe-to Italy and Sicily, for example as she is superior to them and to every other country in the amount of labour that has been expended in beautifying, improving, and fertilizing her surface. It is no exaggeration to affirm, that thousands upon thousands of millions have been laid out in making England what she now is. In no other nation has the combination of beauty with utility been so much. regarded. Another peculiar feature in the physiogony of England is the number and magnificence of the seats of the nobility and gentry. These superb mansions, many of which are venerable from their antiquity, and all of which are surrounded with fine woods and grounds, give to the country an appearance of age, security, and wealth, that we should in vain look for anywhere else. The farm-houses and cottages have mostly also a substantial, comfortable look; and evince that taste for rural beauty, neatness, and cleanliness, that eminently distinguish their occupiers."

Present State of Agriculture.

No practical statesman or moralist can doubt the national importance of preserving and, if it may be, of still further beautifying this unrivalled inheritance, upon which so much toil has been spent. More desirable, certainly, than the further extension of mines, or workshops, or factories, would be the meansif means can be found-of infusing new life into every branch of agricultural industry, of stimulating the cheerful voice of labour behind the plough, of restoring the joy of the harvest

home, and fostering the taste which twines the roses round the cottage door. In the present state of agricultural England, some such means are certainly needed. No free-trader, with any pretension to candour, can deny that the farming interest is depressed. The admission involves no blame to free trade in the food of the people, which is not the less just because it may happen to inflict hardship upon certain classes. The fault may even lie in the farmers themselves, or in the landlords, or, as I should be disposed to say, in thirty years of unwise legislation; but, however this may be, the fact stands-agriculture is depressed. Even in a party sense the admission may be made with safety: for politically these poor farmers are undoubtedly beaten. After being led for the second time into the field, they find the old banner again lowered to the adversary before the firing of a single shot. They really are not any longer formidable. The aged lion has not so much as one surviving tooth, and it is the merest dictate of humanity that those whom he might have frightened for a moment should now put aside their fears, and look with pity and generous tenderness into the wounds with which he is evidently bleeding.

The agricultural interest, then, generally speaking, is depressed, because for some time back this branch of industry has been a losing one. It can require no minute analysis of farming accounts to convince any unbiassed man of common sense that this must be the case; because if the farmers have not lost, and lost heavily, during the late low prices of grain, they must have habitually realized enormous profits when the average range of quotations was so much higher. If they have received only ten shillings a quarter less on forty millions of quarters of all kind of grain, which is no exaggerated estimate, but on the contrary below the truth, their annual loss has been twenty millions sterling. If they still flourish after such a loss, their former condition must have been one of extraordinary prosperity. Yet it is certain that farming is not that branch of industry in which great fortunes have ever been

made in England. It is true that, under the excessive stimulus of the Government demand during the late war, very large profits were in some cases temporarily realized; but they were only temporary, and soon flowed off in increased rents, which were never afterwards lowered in any degree at all proportionate to the decline which took place in farming profits. In truth, under ordinary circumstances, it is a struggling branch of industry-able to keep its ground, to hold its head clear above water, as it were, but with no superabundance of strength, which can be taken out of it and not missed. In the days of Edmund Burke it was "a poor trade," subject to great risks and losses; and that eminent observer, who upon such a point was little likely to err, rarely knew a farmer who, after years of persevering toil, was able to do more than leave his children to begin life just at the point from which he had started himself.

In one important respect the farmer differs from the shopkeeper, the merchant, or the manufacturer. There are no weekly, nor monthly, nor even quarterly returns to his capital. The slow revolving year alone replaces what he expends, even where the replacement is quickest; and during that long revolution what things may occur to make the result a disappointment! A climate too genial in January or too harsh in May, a frost when the tender blade is springing up, or rains when, in the words of Lord Brougham, the sickle should be glancing amongst the stalks,-to say nothing of occasional visitations of blight in the ripened ear, or disease amongst the cattle,-are any one of them enough to make the gain upon the sum total of the year's labours an almost inappreciable quantity. Neither is farming one of those lazy trades which go on almost of themselves. Every business, indeed, that is worth much requires the master's eye, but none more than this. Without vigilance and toil, and constant discretion in deciding between the wise and the unwise outlay, such capital as a farmer has would melt away like snow before the fire. He does not eat the bread of idleness; and when, after being on foot early and late, the struggle does go hard with him-rent, and tithe,

and taxes, and wages flowing off very much as usual, out of sadly-diminished receipts-it is not wonderful that he should sometimes seem a little out of his wits at a protectionist meeting, or that he should take his place at a board of guardians with a grim determination to screw down the rates, which gives him an aspect of hard-heartedness very foreign to his real cha

racter.

A Stimulus wanted.

The farmers, then, have certainly been losing of late, and those in the more backward districts-the great majority of the whole class-have considerably less capital than they had ten years ago. In general they may be said to be low-spirited, discouraged, looking half-sadly half-curiously at those wealthier or more energetic members of the class, who are meeting their difficulties with true English pluck, and breasting with bolder strokes than ever these rough waters of free trade. The majority are down-hearted, and all the while desperately scolded and snubbed and lectured for want of enterprise; landlords even, who are themselves not conspicuous amongst the working bees of the hive, showing in their speeches a much stronger sense of the evil of undrained clays, and fields too fertile in rushes, than is entertained by the melancholy listeners from whom their rents are received. The case is evidently one of those for which the medical faculty is accustomed to prescribe tonics or stimulants-something, perhaps, a little bitter on the tongue, but giving a new and delightful sense of life, when it begins to tell upon the inward parts. For the agricultural languor, accordingly, different stimulants have been suggested. Mr. M'Culloch is known to have an affection for the "stimulus of taxation;" but with a good sense, which is more valuable than theoretical consistency, he has never advised that this should be tried upon the farmers. Another eminent authority, Mr. Porter, has considerable faith in the stimulus of "low prices." I am sorry to say that I have not equal faith in the

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virtue of the remedy. It appears to me to be, like the stimulus of taxation, one of those drugs which, however useful under certain circumstances, has, upon the whole, a tendency to lower the patient. It would be difficult to find a more instructive work on economics than the " Progress of the Nation;" but those who learn from its remarkable chapter upon Agriculture the details of the period when, under the action of intense demand, one hundred and thirty-three inclosure bills were passed in a single year, will find it hard to imagine how a state of things exactly opposite to that which then existed is likely to bring about similar results.

Transfer of Local Taxation.

More reasonable would be the notion of encouraging the farmer to exert himself by lightening the load upon his shoulders, if it were possible to give him any relief in this way which would really make the burthen lighter. But, upon any large view of financial policy, nothing of the kind is possible; nor is there any one principle more objectionable in itself, than the transfer of charges properly local to a central fund. No local institution has life in it, which does not involve the receipt and disbursement of money by parties under full responsibility. Local taxation, therefore, is an essential part of that whole system of local self-government, which is the grand conservative principle of English liberty. But further, when the local taxation of England is examined, it must be quite evident that no remission of it would be more than a temporary benefit to the farmer. The farmers, indeed, will take a temporary benefit rather than have nothing; but suffering as they are, and entitled as they may be, to substantial relief, if it can be afforded, no statesman has a right to evade an immediate difficulty by a procedure which, as a permanent measure, will not bear examination. Tithes and the bulk of the local rates are distinctly a deduction from rent. If they had never existed, the present rents would have been by so much more. If they were removed, the