Norfolk Farviiiig 



44T 



Norfolk. We hear a vast deal of the decrease of tlie 

 seeking a new tenant) is always unfortunate. If 

 prices are good, crops are bad ; if meat is dear, stock 

 are unhealthy ; even should all things be prosperous, 

 the tenant hopes that the landlord will not take 

 "advaiitngiof" him for another year. But, at the 

 end of a lease, the tenant naturally expects a fresh 

 arrangement, which usually means an advance of rent ; 

 and, if the increase is a moderate one, he cheerfully 

 pays it, and enters upon a fresh lease with the deter- 

 mination to use his skill, energy, and capital, not only 

 in getting his own living, but in still further impro\-ing 

 his landlord's estate. 



If landlords object to grant leases (and I freely con- 

 fess it is not advisable to do so indiscrimiiiatdy), at 

 least there should be compensation for unexhausted 

 improvements. Most persons connected with the 

 land are terribly frightened when the term tenaut-righf 

 is breathed, and they say it might be made a means 

 of extortion, and the landlords would be plundered 

 right and left. But is it so M-here tenant-right is the 

 custom of the country ? Look at Lincolnshire. There 

 are no leases on the wolds of that county, which is as 

 well farmed as West Norfolk, but there is an equitable 

 system of tenant-right which answers admirably, so 

 that when a tenant quits his farm he is paid for the 

 unexhausted improvements he leaves behind him. I 

 was talking the other day to a Lincolnshire landlord, 

 and he seemed surprised that the system did not exist 

 in other counties ; he said he had never paid a penny 

 for tenant-right himself ; it was always a question 

 between out-going and in-coming tenant, and the 

 landlord knew nothing about it save in the exceptional 

 case of buildings and other such like permanent im- 

 provements. 



THE MALT -TAX. 



A word or two about the Malt-tax. We are met 

 with this sort of argument: "prices are higher, the 

 acreage of barley increases — leave well alone." To 

 this we reply, free trade has taught us that we can 

 grow barley better than any other countiy in the world ; 

 it is our speciality in grain ; almost the whole world 

 can produce wheat, better wheat than we can. Nor- 

 folk is not like Ireland and Scotland. We cannot re- 

 duce our tillage and increase our gi-ass, and so decrease 

 our expenses, and employ only half the labourers. 

 We in this dry climate, and on these poor soils, must 

 grow grain, and we must have a rotation of crops, and 

 if only one sort of corn really pays, we can produce on 

 our arable land more meat than if it were all pasture, 

 and grow all the corn besides, A^diich must be a benefit 

 to the countiy. And if the chief part of the world 

 can gi-ow wheat, and only a portion of it produce 

 prime l)arley, if there was perfect free trade, there is 

 no reason \\hy the price of barley should not equal 

 that of wheat. But even those who admit the injustice 

 of exposing the British farmer to the competition of 

 the whole world, and taxing his barley 60 per cent, in 

 the first stage of its manufacture, say, "We can't spare 



the six millions the Malt-tax brings in." The greater 

 the tax the greater the injustice, and surely Parliament 

 might at least apply the true principle of all taxation, 

 by levying the duty on the manufactured article and 

 not on the barley, directly it is wetted for malting. 



Now to the vexed question of game. Mark, none of 

 my correspondents complain of the Gavie-lazas, and 

 nowQ o{7oiiigcd game. It is all one and the same ciy, 

 the over-pn'sa-c'ation of ground game. There can't be 

 too many partridges, and even pheasants do compara- 

 tively little harm, but no man can farm against hares- 

 and rabbits, and no abatement of rent can compensate 

 him for the loss of his crops. If a farmer, with his 

 eyes open, likes to hire a cheaply-rented game fanu, I 

 don't suppose, however much we may pity his want oj 

 sense, or grieve over circumstances which may have 

 forced him to this refuge of the destitute, or 

 greatly as some may deprecate the questionable use 

 the o\ATier makes of his land, that there is veiy much 

 for faiTners or the pul^lic to complain of. But when 

 land is let at its full A-alue, and then stocked with 

 running game, or if hares and rabbits greatly increase 

 during the continuance of the lease or tenancy, then, 

 and it is no use mincing words, such game preserva- 

 tion, whether practised by the most mighty prince or 

 the smallest squire, is a wrong and a robbery. 



DISEASES .A.MOXG LIVE-STOCK. 



The last cause of complaint is by no means, and at 

 no time, the least, and it is at the present moment 

 particularly forcible. The losses of stock from new 

 diseases during the past twenty-five years, have been 

 most appalling, and when they are fairly estimated, 

 at once account for the enhanced price of meat. No 

 mention is made in the report of forty-three of pleuro- 

 pneumonia, or foot-and-mouth disease. It will be 

 remembered that the free importation of foreign cattle 

 commenced in 1842, and shortly after that date the 

 two diseases I have mentioned found their way into 

 Norfolk, and continued with varying severity to ravage 

 our herds and flocks, till they were almost extirpated 

 by the cattle plague restrictions. There can be no 

 doubt that pleuro and this epizootic epidemic are 

 foreign diseases. They have been known in Holland' 

 and France from time immemorial, and though we 

 have no evidence of the actual introduction of either 

 of these contagious disorders into this country, we 

 know that soon after the general admission of foreign 

 stock, both became prevalent here ; and A\'e w\\o have 

 attempted to graze foreign cattle, are aware, to our 

 cost, how singularly subject Dutch cattle are to pleuro- 

 pneumonia. 



Small-pox in sheep prevailed to a frightful extent in 

 Norfolk in 1848, and we were badly hit by the cattle 

 plague in 1865. That latter visitation was manfully 

 met in Norfolk, and though five or six thousand head 

 of cattle were destroyed, few, if any, cases of indi- 

 vidual ruin followed. We started at the outbreak of 



