THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



Ml 



root crop*, as you all kiioff, to make up the supply when the 

 summer food fails ; and we have the opportunity, if we have 

 the judgment, the skill, and the liberality to do it, to raise 

 beef and mutton beyond any other country on the face of 

 the globe. It is very astonishing to look to the statistics of 

 France and of this country, and to see the wonderful differ- 

 ence between the amount that is produced in butchers' meat 

 here ; and there is this to console you in the prospect of it, 

 that there is now such a consumption of this description of 

 food that it will hardly be outdone in this country. For my 

 own part, I think it has ruled rather as much too high as wheat 

 has ruled too lo* for some time past. Since I recollect, it was 

 hardly the case that the labouring population of this country 

 were able to indulge themselves with eating butchers' meat at 

 home. The father of a family thought himself very well off 

 if he could feed one or two pigs, and exceedingly well off 

 if he could maintain a cow ; but you now see the butcher's 

 shop in every village, and you are often liable to be trotted 

 over by the butcher's cart dispensing joints of meat at 

 every cottage door as you go along the road. Such is the 

 difference in the way of living, and I am sure you will all 

 rejoice with me in t'ninking that it is so. Then, gentlemen, 

 since these changes have taken place in the improvement and 

 in the increase of the quantity of butchers' meat which we are 

 now able to take from our farmers to market, has not a corres- 

 ponding increase taken place in corn ? because the very thing 

 that creates one gives a stimulus to the other. You manure 

 your lauds that you may rear root crops, aud y ou me guano, bone 

 phosphates, aud every kind of combination which can increase 

 the quantity. The quantity increased in that respect goes again 

 to increase the manure in your foldyard. You have had the wis- 

 dom to adopt a very different plan of reaping your corn and har- 

 vesting it from that which prevailed when I first knew this 

 county. At that time you might have gone into the fields and 

 into the stubbles, where it would have taken you almost up to 

 the knees, and you would have seen a proportionate amount of 

 heads of corn scattered among it, and which could not have 

 been saved in that slovenly mode of harvesting. I am glad 

 to see now that from one end of the Tyne to the other 

 you hardly see a field which, as I said before, would give 

 cover to a partridge. Therefore the quantity of manure is 

 not only increased in your foldyards, but you increase it 

 also by the purchase of those foreign aud adventitious 

 manures which have had so great an effect in producing 

 your root crops, and those root crops produce to ycu what 

 all of you who have had experience in farming know is so 

 profitable — than is, butcher's meat and wool. 1 

 should like to say one word iu the cause of sheep- 

 stock. There is a friend of mine here to whom I have talked 

 for the last 20 years on the subject, and I am happy to say I 

 have no cause to change my opinion, and it is this — that the 

 wealth and success of a farmer may be pretty well calculated 

 by the amount of his sheep stock. Sheep are said to be the 

 animals with the golden hoof, that they enrich where tkey go, 

 aud that is true. They not only enrich the master, but the soil. 

 Their manure has a peculiarly efficacious quality, and it is dis- 

 tributed throughout the land in a way very different from that 

 which is left in patches by horned cattle ; but there is this 

 also, that while you have the mutton, probably as valuable at 

 the end of the sheep's life as beef, it has given you, year after 

 year, the fleece, which is of itself so important, and which, 

 in the progress of the manufacture of this country, I think 

 we have no reason to fear ever again seeing at a very 

 disastrous price. After enumerating the improvements 

 which had taken place in agriculture for the last 20 years, 

 he continued : — If, T say, you look at these advantages in the 



present day, you cannot but with me congratulate yourselves 

 upon having the benefit of all these improvements, and you 

 cannot but with me conceive that that progress is not yet at 

 an end. We have no reason to think that the ingenuity of 

 man is exhausted, or that the chemical combinations which 

 science has brought to bear upon the produce of the land are 

 at an end. We need not fear yet, or halt in our progress. 

 We need not look, I think, with any doubt upon the time that 

 's to corae. We still have old mother earth to work upon, 

 who has shown herself always grateful for our efforts ; and 

 you may rely upon it, though I shall not live to see it, there 

 will be yet days of great progress and of great prosperity for 

 the agriculture of this country. I look upon the farmer as 

 the manufacturer of the food of the people, and you may 

 compare him with the manufacturer in any other way ; and if 

 you look to the ancient mode of thrashing and reaping corn — 

 to the time when a man, from early morn till dewy eve, plied 

 his labour upon a board in a ham, and with two sticks 

 thumped out most imperfectly, first on one side of the sheaf 

 and then on the other — if you look to that process, and com- 

 pare it with the expeditious and much more perfect one of 

 the thrashing machine, whether by water or steam, or by the 

 still inferior one of horses, which many men are compelled to 

 employ, you will see there is a wonderful difference, not only 

 iii the operation, but in the intellect which is required 

 to conduct these operations. The manufacturer of 

 the food of the people bears an analogy to manu- 

 facturers of other descriptions. Some of you may 

 recollect the old village weaver driving his shuttle from 

 morning to night with his single loom, aud then finishing a 

 web after three or four weeks' labour. That time, however 

 agreeable or arcadian it might be to look back upon, was 

 not a condition that ever had been a happy one, or ever 

 would be a productive one. We saw the result of it a 

 few years ago in Ireland, and wherever the thing is at- 

 tempted we shall see the same result ; aud why is it so ? 

 Because it is impossible upon a small scale to introduce 

 machinery of an expensive character; and why is it so? 

 and there is nothing now but expensive machinery, improved 

 operations in agriculture, and division of labour upon a tole- 

 rably extensive scale, which can produce any result that is 

 desirable in a national point of view. The object of the nation 

 is not to load the country with an immense peasantry, but to 

 raise the greatest amount of produce by the smallest number 

 of consumers, and to have the greatest possible disposable 

 amount of food for the ever-increasing population of our towns 

 and manufactories. If we contemplate the increase of the 

 population in this country as 360,000 a-year, we shall see that, 

 unless from wars or emigration, all the efforts we can use will 

 fall far short of supplying them with food. It is on this ground 

 that I think that you must have farms of considerable extent 

 if you intend that the progress of agriculture should go on. 

 It is consistent in theory that it should be so, because on a 

 farm of considerable extent, where all the arrangements are 

 regular, aud the operations are conducted with skill and good 

 management, you have skilled hands needful for each kind of 

 work. If you go to the farm of a man who has eight or ten horses , 

 you see as regular a system as in any other manufactory ; you 

 see ploughs sent to make the drill rows, you see carts putting 

 manure into these rows, and followed by another set of ploughs 

 covering that up, and then comes the sow drill to put in the 

 seed, and before night 10 or 12 acres are sowrfand covered in 

 the most promising way ; but, on the other hand, the poor 

 man on a small farm, with a pair of horses and a hind, how is 

 he to succeed ? He makes a few rows in the morning, he 

 changes all the harness of his horses, and puts them into the 



