320 THE AGRICULTURAL COMMITTEE. 



rely on their own exertions for a deliverance from their self-entailed 

 embarrassment and not on acts of parliament was treated with neg- 

 lect and ridicule ; and now that times are changed, these self-willed 

 partisans of a mistaken policy rave with all the fury of vexation and 

 despair because wiser men of their own class unfold to the world the 

 injustice and absurdity of their propositions. Times we say are 

 changed : there are commercial, manufacturing and monied interests, 

 to be consulted as well as the landed interest ; and the country- 

 gentleman can no longer hope to be preferred to every other class 

 in the community : the Marquis of Chandos himself arch-farmer's 

 friend as he is, cannot cure the malady with all his specifics . The 

 landed men and the farmers must work out their own deliverance by 

 reforming the luxurious habits consequent on war prices by econ- 

 omizing labour generally, if by machinery so much the better, 

 by adjusting rents to a scale proportionate to produce, and by im- 

 proving on the present method of cultivation. These are the means, 

 and we believe, the only means by which the distress of the 

 agriculturists can be alleviated ; and we wish them to recollect that 

 great encouragement is now offered to their honest endeavours by 

 relieving the farmer from the pressure of tithes, removing many local 

 burdens unfairly laid on him and by the improvements in the poorlaws. 

 The numerous complaints made by the farmers and their repre- 

 sentatives in parliament and the loud expressions of dissatisfaction 

 with every measure of relief suggested or carried in the three pre- 

 vious sessions led to the appointment of a Committee of enquiry in 

 February last which had for its special object the examination not of 

 land-agents, corn-factors or others who by any possibility might be 

 wrongly biassed but of men actually engaged in farming, men able 

 to give a practical and intelligent judgment on agricultural affairs. 

 How this committee was chosen and on what principle we cannot 

 say : but at any rate it contained a large portion of the old-fashioned 

 twaddling and very obstinate gentlemen whose wish was to compel 

 the legislature to sacrifice every other interest for their own ; and they 

 were not likely to agree to any set of resolutions falling short of their 

 own exalted views; much less would they acknowledge with their intelli- 

 gent and honest chairman a man whose interests are bound up with 

 their own, that'* the remedy for the present distresses is within the 

 farmer's power" and that " industry and good management on his 

 part with a generous forbearance on the part of his landlord will pro- 

 duce that result which it is in vain to seek (because not in their 

 power to grant) from the government or the legislature." Accord- 

 ingly when Mr. Shaw Lefevre's report which embodied suggestions 

 like those offered above was presented to the committee, (who in a 

 previous stage might well have amended it), it was nearly unani- 

 mously rejected; and thus the labours of about four months have 

 ended in the mere accumulation of a little good and much useless 

 evidence on this important subject. Under these circumstances it 

 became incumbent on the chairman who was grossly attacked and 

 vilely'misrepresented by the to ry newspapers to explain to his exclu- 

 sively agricultural constituents of North-Hampshire the principles of 

 his own conduct and if possible to convince them of its propriety. 



