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additional margin of profit might for a time, or during the currency of leases, be left to the farmers; but the rise of the tide after it goes back is not more certain than that rent would ultimately absorb that margin. Of course, if such removal of taxation only prevented a fall of rent, it comes to exactly the same thing. The remission would still be a remission not to the farmer, but to the landlord. No transfer of taxation, therefore, even if it were just, would afford to the agricultural interest that healthful stimulus which it requires. At best it would be a slight and temporary relief. But its chief operation would be delusive, wasteful, and, seeing the difficulty of maintaining a sufficient amount of general revenue, even for purposes of supreme national concern, in the last degree impolitic.

None of these prescriptions being admissible, and the old stimulant of protection being by general consent not only rejected, but recognised as itself the cause of that industrial prostration which constitutes the malady to be dealt with, the case of the farmers, or at least of the less skilful, wealthy, and enterprising section of the class, would seem rather desperate.

Transfer of Land to New Hands.

There are some reasoners, however, by whom the difficulty is disposed of in a short and decisive manner. They are of that class of thinkers, who are always philosophical upon the misfortunes of their neighbours, and generally very ingenious in fitting such painful facts into some neat theory of social progress and prosperity. Their view may be expressed in some such language as the following :- "The poorer and more ignorant farmers are incorrigible. They are altogether behind the age, too old to adopt new ways, too besotted with protectionist prejudices ever to understand the exigencies of free trade. To talk to them of improved agriculture, drainage, guano, and all that sort of thing, is waste of breath, a mere casting of pearls before swine. There is nothing for them but,

to go and make room for others. They must go to America, or Australia, or wherever they can; but at all events go, and leave the land to enlightened capitalists, who are up to the newest modes of husbandry, will double the produce, pay higher rents, and compete with all the world."

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My impression is, that if there were nothing to be thought of but the best means of raising the largest aggregate produce, this reasoning is completely to the point. This is the way which the thing could be most effectually done. But an addition to the aggregate of produce obtained by any considerable displacement of the existing occupiers, and by the substitution of new men who would carry into agriculture the desperate energy of those who, in Manchester language, are known as outsiders," would be, though in itself a good, yet a good purchased at a very heavy price.

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Effects of regarding only the Amount of Produce.

The Romans, whose resemblance to the English has been so often noticed, had all the English fondness for agriculture, and that prejudice which is not yet quite gone in England, that the cultivation of the land is the only kind of industry which does not soil the hands of a gentleman. In the early days of the republic, commanders and statesmen held the plough, and in the later the most original production of the literary genius of Rome was a poem upon agriculture. When, however, it happened that wealth began to flow in with a full tide, and the original severe and simple manners were succeeded by a universal fashion of refined and luxurious indulgence, the old love of agriculture for its own sake gradually disappeared, and the land came to be looked upon in the barest utilitarian light as an instrument for the production of wealth. Under the influence of this dominant principle, the original mode of occupation by what may be called a class of yeomanry gradually declined. The occupants died off or went into the towns.

Small farms ran together into large ones, and the greater part of Italy was brought under a species of wholesale capitalist cultivation. The chief element of that capital, indeed, was not live stock, nor manures, nor machines, but slaves, who were then capital precisely as draught cattle are at the present day; but the one characteristic of the system was, that it was adopted with the sole view of obtaining from the land the largest return, and as those who adopted it were quite free to change it, but did not, the inference is fair, that for a time at least it was successful. Wealth increased, the splendour of the nobility was carried to the highest point, and yet all the while the foundation of the social fabric was rapidly hastening to decay.

Duties of Landlords.

It may seem needless, and one may hope it is, to suggest even a caution to the landowners of England against the temptations which will certainly present themselves, to displace tenantry who have suffered from recent reverses. It is not just that the great experiment of free trade should be carried out at the expense of the farmers. Its hardships are the direct consequence of former gains, of which landlords had always the lion's share, and now that loss is to be borne, landlords ought to take their part in it. As yet they have not done so. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has just announced that the income-tax assessment shows a reduction of five millions sterling in the rental of land in England, that is to say, about ten per cent. upon the whole. But ten per cent. upon the rental is a very inadequate proportion of the loss which the occupiers have suffered. If they are not to be sacrificed, reduction, at least for a time, must be carried further.

Under any circumstances, the owners of land ought not to be considered, by an enlightened public opinion, free to think only of making the most of their land. They ought to be held bound to make the best of it, and at the same time of the people who are upon it. The severing of old social ties is a

great evil, and one now more than ever likely to be productive of other evils spreading out beyond our immediate view. The object, therefore, whether of landlord or statesman, should now be, not to get conveniently rid of these backward agriculturists, but to see how their prejudices can be overcome—how their rude and imperfect system can be improved-and, above all, helpless and poverty-stricken as so many are by repeated losses, to see whether their greatest want can be supplied-the want of CAPITAL.

Note upon Agricultural Labourers.

A question even more important than that respecting the condition of the farmers—namely, the question respecting the condition of the agricultural labourers— is too large to be entered into here; but the policy which would be good for the farmers, would also be good for the other more numerous, and therefore more important, portion of the rural population, by increasing the demand for labour. The evidence appears to be decisive that the labourers have gained greatly by free trade in corn, and the breathing time thus given may be invaluable if it be rightly used. But it will be a fatal mistake to suppose that free trade can either make or keep that condition what it ought to be. Their dwellings, their education, and their want of amusements are all disgraceful, and in no one of these respects are they able to help themselves. My belief, founded on information drawn from various sources, is, that the dark and appalling picture of the condition of the peasantry, which is given by the author of "Yeast," is in the main true, and I honour that powerful writer for not fearing to speak out. His delineation, terrible as it is, is indeed not more so than the plain facts stated from time to time by the Rev. S. G. Osborne, another true champion of those whose friends are few, and the testimonies of such men ought to sound like a trumpet in the ears of the English gentry, and awaken them to the fact that they know little of what is going on in the cottages and the beer-shops.

With respect to reforms, a change in the law of settlement seems to have become a matter of necessity, but it will not be without great hardships. Those hardships might be mitigated, and other good results attained, by a judicious system of allotments, in opposition to which I think Mr. Mill lays too much stress on the population dogma. But here one comes again upon the great truth, that a mere mechanical change is of little use. Allotments, with good superintendence, have worked admirably, but in other cases, where every lug of land is let by a hard battle between landlord and labourer, allotments only become a part of the general machinery for grinding the latter to the earth. In a word, whatever Laisser-faire may say, the English gentry are the keepers of these poor brethren of theirs, and will one day be called upon to show how they have discharged the trust.

CHAPTER IV.

AGRICULTURAL LOANS.

"I bring fresh showers to the thirsting flowers

From the seas and the streams."-SONG OF THE CLOUD.

Loans warranted by the Excess of Capital.

THERE is scarcely any proposition upon which there is a more general agreement amongst enlightened men, than that there is immense room for the investment of new capital in agriculture, and that, with proper management, there is no other kind of industry in which there would be so great a certainty of a profitable return.

If the explanations given in the first part of the present work, relative to the growth of capital in England, be correct, it will appear that the habitual condition of this country is that of having a large portion of capital seeking for, and unable to find, investment; that this is pre-eminently the case at the present moment, and likely to continue so, until some outburst of disastrous and demoralizing speculation carries off the excess for a time. If the explanations in question have been found by any reader to be erroneous, he may at once dismiss the present chapter as unworthy of his attention.

The principle laid down by those economists whose reputation stands highest is, that new capital creates a demand for itself; that it is a confusion of ideas to imagine the possibility of such capital being accumulated in excess; that new savings can and do regularly find employment, and, owing to the acute perceptions of private interest, that employment which yields the best return. This is what is held as the orthodox doctrine

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