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THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



when it is of the utmost importance to acquire a steady 

 habit of industry, and to iaibue it with the military 

 spirit, which is opposed to such a habit, must seriously 

 interfere with every department of labour, and detract 

 fearfully from its amount, whilst the martial spirit 

 superinduced by it prepares the people for any mischief 

 that a disposition to revolt may suggest. 



Such, we say, is the present critical condition of con- 

 tinental Europe. In England, as we have stated, the 

 tendency of the land is to merge the small estates into 

 the large ones, by which the class of yeomen has been 

 annihilated. This principle has been carried still further 

 by the enclcsure of the commons and waste lands, which 

 of right belonged to the poor. Nearly all these ancient 

 institutions, which had hitherto resisted feudalism, and 

 remained a relic of Saxon liberty, have been con- 

 verted into cultivated fields, and absorbed by the neigh- 

 bouring nobles or gentry into their estates. The advan- 

 tage to the country from this general process, is the li- 

 beration of small capitals in freehold land, to be invested 

 in it again by its owners as tenant-farmers, or in some 

 other trade or commercial enterprise. We have seen, 

 during the last fifty years, a new race of agriculturists 

 spring up out of this system, by whom, as tenant- 

 farmers, agriculture has become a very different thing to 

 what it was during previous centuries. The increase of 

 tenant-farmers, and the throwing of many small farms 

 into one large one, have not, therefore, been unattended 

 with extensive benefit to the country, if viewed in a 

 merely commercial point of light. To the owner of an 

 estate it is equal to a power of sale in effect, affording 

 him adequate return for his capital, considering its 

 safety. On the other hand, the occupation of the land 

 falls into the hands of persons of property, and possessing 

 intelligence and enterprise far superior to that of the 

 small yeomen-proprietors of the previous age. By their 

 well-directed efforts it has been rendered more produc- 

 tive and profitable ; whilst the same capital being in- 

 vested, partly in the purchase and partly in the occupa- 

 tion and cultivation of a farm, would, in most cases, be 

 a bar to improvement, and afford the party a bare 

 living. 



Whether, indeed, we look at the two systems, and 

 judge of their comparative merits by their effects upon 

 those immediately concerned, or upon society at large, 

 we shall be at no loss to determine which works the 

 best. With regard to the first, in almost all those 

 countries named above (with the single exception of the 

 Netherlands) as having adopted the subdivision of the 

 land, we find the peasant- proprietors in a condition of 

 miserable poverty, compelled to subsist on the coarsest 

 fare, totally unable to cultivate their ground to the best 

 advantage, even if they possessed the knowledge to do 

 so, and in every respect in a social condition far inferior 

 to the agricultural labourers in England. In Prussia, we 

 believe, they pay a land-tax by way of quit-rent to the 

 Crown ; or at least they should do so. But when Mr. 

 Jacobs went thither in 1828 as a Government special 

 commissioner, he found that they had been eleven years 

 in arrear, which the Prussian Government had agreed to 

 forego, on condition that they would be more punctual 



in future ; " but," he remarks, " it did not appear that 

 they had been able to fulfil the contract." This quit- 

 rent amounted to from 9d. to Is. 6d. per acre; and 

 whether any improvement has taken place in their con- 

 dition since 1828, we cannot state ; but we can assume 

 that, compared with the tenant-farmers, or even the 

 farm-labourers of England, their life is one of privation 

 and indigence. We believe the condition of the peasant- 

 farmers of France is equally destitute of those comforts 

 and advantages which the mere possession of land is 

 supposed to confer. Such, at least, is the account given 

 by those who have visited and travelled in that country. 



But if we compare the effects upon society at large, 

 and in an economical point of view, the difference is still 

 more in favour of England. We see here the land in 

 the hands of an enlightened, enterprising, and wealthy 

 class, who are constantly adding to the wealth of the 

 nation by improvements which increase the produce of 

 the country. In their hands, and since the large-farm 

 system has been adopted, agriculture has risen in im- 

 portance, ami those practising it have made continual 

 advances in intelligence. Science and philosophy have 

 been brought to bear upon it, in all their strength and 

 efficiency, and every department of the art is being re- 

 duced to as much certainty, in regard to the final results, 

 as the nature of any human institution will admit. In- 

 formation is extending in every direction, on all subjects 

 of interest, through agricultural clubs and periodical 

 publications ; so that from a class relying upon tradi- 

 tional routine, looking upon "book-learning," and en- 

 lightened experiments as next to a qualification for a 

 strait-jacket and Bedlam, the farmers of the present 

 generation are becoming well-read men, feeling the im- 

 portance of acquiring knowledge, from seeing its benefi- 

 cial effects where it is possessed. Agriculture, in fact, 

 is fast rising to what Nature has always destined it to be — 

 a series of operations, every one of which is based upon 

 science, and for the proper performance of which, a 

 knowledge of the principles of science is necessary. To 

 compare the present race of farmers in England to those 

 on the continent of Europe, would be about as incon- 

 gruous as to place them in juxtaposition with their own 

 ancestors or predecessors of a century back. It is im- 

 possible that a peasant proprietary could have raised 

 agriculture, in so short a period, to what it now is in 

 England. The capital, the means of knowledge and 

 enlightenment, the mental stimulus — all these are want- 

 ing ; aud the whole, or at least prevailing idea in the 

 mind of a peasant proprietor, is how to make "both 

 ends meet"; whilst, if perchance that of accumula- 

 tion supervenes, it is entertained on the principle of a 

 rigid parsimony utterly at variance with that of making 

 a present large sacrifice for a larger prospective benefit. 



This argument holds equally good in respect to the 

 division of the land into small tenanted farms. What- 

 ever advantages may have arisen from its adoption in so 

 small a country as Belgium, where society is upon a 

 a very peculiar footing, it has never worked well in the 

 United Kingdom. In Ireland, where the sub-letting 

 and sub-division of the land have been carried out to an 

 extent far beyond what has been done on the continent, 



