THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



383 



duly exercised. There is a law, however, which relaxes 

 the grasp of the monopoly in favour of agriculture; 

 but although that law has been many years in exist- 

 ence, it has never come into operation, from the endless 

 formalities rendered necessary by the jealous interests 

 of the revenue — formalities which, by the loss of time 

 and annoyances they entail, are more expensive than 

 the commodity itself at the usual price of the monopoly. 

 A farmer in the neighbourhood of Paris, having once ap- 

 plied for salt at the reduced price, to administer to his 

 wheat, which invariably lodged every year, was coolly 

 told to send for it at Bordeaux, where there are depots 

 of the refuse of the fisheries — a substance doubtless 

 better as a manure, yet unsuited to his purpose, and, 

 besides, absolutely beyond his reach, from the expenses 

 of transit from so great a distance. 



Can it be wondered at, after such disclosures, that 

 the French tenant-farmers, as a class, are so inferior 

 to ours in respect to education, manners, means, and 

 abilities? They turn within a circle of ignorance and 

 misery which a fatal system closes around them as 

 an insurmountable barrier. They toil from generation 

 togeneration without any immediate prospect of bettering 

 their condition. They must sow their land without being 

 placed in a position to buy manures, or cattle tomakeit,or 

 improved implements to counter-balance the increasing- 

 deficiency of labour, and to husband their land as it 

 ought to be. Under such circumstances the strictest 

 parsimony must govern all their operations, to be 

 enabled to maintain their families and pay their rent — 

 a parsimony which banishes comfort from their hovels, 

 flesh meat from their repasts, education from their 

 offspring, cattle from their stables, harvest plenty from 

 their barns, and leaves them a race of Pariah slaves, 

 coarse, ignorant, and poor — easily distinguished from 

 their fellow-men by their low countenance, their rude 

 dress, their uncouth language, and that vulgar cunning 

 peculiar to degraded menials. And yet they are a 

 highly-moral, patient, and enduring race. When pro- 



perly trained by civilization and discipline, they are 

 capable of greatness and heroism. They form the bulk 

 of the armies of France, and have shown on a thousand 

 battle-fields that the blood that flows in their veins is 

 neither base nor degenerate. But the position which 

 French manners and legislation have made them is a 

 fatality whicii enthrals them, and renders them inca- 

 pable of rising and progressing. In all parts of France 

 the land proprietors, with whom we have convei'sed 

 about agricultural progress, have invariably pointed at 

 this stubborn ignorance and incapacity of the peasantry 

 as the great stumbling-block to improvement in agri- 

 culture ; for they are not only indifferent to progress, but 

 secretly inimical to it. A new method, a new breed of 

 cattle, a new implement, becomes at once the object of 

 their passive opposition. They affect awkwardness and 

 ignorance, and not unfrequently testify their opposition 

 by destroying the object of their enmity. 



Many land proprietors have even been deterred from 

 entering into the management of their own land at all, 

 or according to the principles of improved systems, 

 fi'om the representations of men in whom, being in- 

 experienced themselves, they placed a blind confidence. 

 French landed property is so heavily taxed (about 15 per 

 cent, of the gross income), that, owing besides to its 

 great division, it becomes a matter of vital im- 

 portance to a proprietor to secure the rent of his land • 

 for whether he receives it or not, the tax must be paid. 

 Hence the difiidence and hesitation with which landed 

 proprietors generally enter into agricultural pursuits. 

 No doubt many failures are to be ascribed to that 

 timidity. Proper outlay is eschewed, and half-mea- 

 sures resorted to. The result isunavoidable. Discour- 

 agement ensues, and the attempt is abandoned, to the 

 great detriment of the cause of progress, and to the 

 triumph of the routine and ignorance of the delighted 

 peasantry, who point at the failure as a powerful argu- 

 ment against every kind of innovation. 



NOTES ON NOVELTIES AT THE AGRICULTURAL SHOWS OF 1857. 



By Robert Scott Burn. 



1.— THE ROYAL AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY 

 OF ENGLAND. Meeting at Salisbury, July 21, 22, 

 23, and 24. 



2.— THE HIGHLAND AND AGRICULTURAL 

 SOCIETY. Meeting at Glasgow, August 5, 6, and 7. 



3.— THE YORKSHIRE AGRICULTURAL SO- 

 CIETY. Meeting at York, August 6 and 7. 



As first in point of date, and decidedly first in point 

 of importance, we commence our paper with a notice of 

 the more striking of the novelties of the meeting of the 

 Royal Agricultural Society at Salisbury. This has un- 

 doubtedly been the first in point of excellence of all the 

 Shows of the Royal Society which have yet been held. 

 It has been decidedly successful, and this not from any 

 adventitious aids which the arcliseological attractions of 



the city in which the Show was held, the hospitality of its 

 citizens, or the glorious weather which prevailed at the 

 time, might have accorded to the great gathering, the 

 high feast of tlie Genius of Agriculture. It was entirely 

 a legitimate success, dependent upon none of those aids 

 we havealready alluded to, but upon its agricultural merits 

 alone. At no meeting has there been such a full collec- 

 tion of implements, or such a splendid show of live stock, 

 as at this. Nor is this to be wondered at : all improve- 

 ment is progressive ; the feeble attempts of infancy but 

 tend to cultivate the habits and enlarge the faculties 

 which lend strength and vigour to maturer life ; and the 

 tiny Shows of bygone years, which but afforded lounging 

 places to an indifferent public, or an opportunity 

 for the incredulous and the " slow" to indulge in sneers 



