THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



293 



tend to keep down the price of wheat ia the Southern 

 Departments. ButM. de Lnvergne, who is a powerful 

 advocate for the abolition of the sliding scale, and of 

 free import and export at all times, shows that this ap- 

 prehension is founded on wrong data. In Le Journal 

 d' Agriculture Pratique of the 20th January last, in 

 animadverting upon an article in a previous number by 

 M. Andre, he writes: " They can," he says, "bring 

 to the French ports of the Mediterranean, Russian 

 wheats at less than 10 or 12 francs per hectolitre in 

 ordinary years, including theea'pense of transport, and 

 the profits of commerce rated as high as we can 

 imagine them; and when we reflect that Russia has 

 every year an excess to export ofbO or GO millions of 

 hectolitres, we see nothing but imminent danger in free 

 importation. 



" Certainly, if these facts were true, the dangerwould 

 indeed be very great ; but are they true ? Turning 

 over a few leaves, I see, at page 43 of the same number, 

 in the table of the prices current of agricultural pro- 

 duce, the actual price of wheat at Odessa, and find it 

 to be 16 f. 70 c. for the first quality, and 15 f. 50 c. for 

 the average qualities, which are both higher than in 

 three-fourths of France. How to reconcile these prices 

 with the aflfirmation of M. Andre we cannot conceive. 

 Which is it that is deceived, he or the price-current ? 

 What compels me to believe that it is not the latter, is, 

 that during the whole course of the year 1853, notwith- 

 standing the incessant operation of free importation 

 and the lowness of our own prices, that of wheat has 

 never fallen at Marseilles below 18 francs per hecto- 

 litre. Where, then, are the fifty or sixty million hecto- 

 litres that Russia can export every year, and which can 

 be poured into our ports at 10 francs?" 



This argument is unanswerable, especially when it is 

 further considered that France, like the United King- 

 dom, 18 an importing rather than an exporting country, 



and that she has required an excess of imports, on an 

 average of 30 years, of at least 1,000,000 hectolitres per 

 annum, to make up the consumption. That country is 

 at the present moment, like England, suffering under a 

 plethora of wheat, the result of two favourable years, 

 and the price has been accordingly reduced — certainly 

 not by the largeness of the importation. 



We are glad to find France at last disposed to reci- 

 procate with England in the freedom of commerce, there 

 being every reason to expect that the other continental 

 governments will in time follow the example. Belgium , 

 Holland, Sardinia, and Switzerland have already adopted 

 it, and with the best effect. It is this, and this only, 

 that the British producers, whether agricultural or 

 manufacturing, require, to enable them to compete with 

 all the world. " A clear stage, and no favour," is their 

 motto; and a few years of perseverance will, we firmly 

 believe, put them in possession of it. 



We will not conceal our opinion, however, that in 

 France the farmers stand on a different footing from 

 those of the United Kingdom, and that in order to reap 

 the benefit of any change in the law, an entire alteration 

 of the land system is indispensable. Whilst the pre- 

 sent law of inheritance exists, and the land is liable 

 to continual subdivisions as successive inheritors 

 die off, until the holdings are reduced in size 

 to mere patches of cottage garden ground, no 

 improvement can take place either in the culture of the 

 soil or in the condition of the cultivators, to enable 

 them to stand against competition or bear the results of 

 the vicissitudes of seasons. This is a consideration 

 which will ere long force itself upon the French 

 Government, who, whilst anxious to relieve the agri- 

 cultural distress, finds itself hampered at every step by 

 a law which acts as a prohibition to all progress either 

 in the condition of the soil or the proprietors. 



THE WANT OF SYSTEM IN THE EDUCATION OF THE FARMER. 



Something more than twelvemonths since, when con- 

 sidering the case of the labourer, a society of agricul- 

 turists came to the conclusion "that the progress in 

 mechanism, science, and the arts renders an improved 

 judicious education essential to the labourers, while it 

 would be highly advantageous to the farmers.'" They 

 felt, in fact, their own want ; and in saying all they 

 did for their men, could not forbear adding a word for 

 themselves. There was something, as we took it, very 

 suggestive in such a rider, and we are in no way sur- 

 prised to find the same association now following this 

 meeting up with one more directly addressed to their 

 own case. If progress in mechanism and science ne- 

 cessarily demands a higher tone in the character of our 

 workmen, the same cause must most essentially con- 

 duce in a yet greater degree to our own advance in the 

 social scale. Agriculture, indeed, is coming itself to be 

 systematically treated as a science, and it is to the ex- 

 tension of this system we have now to look. The 



farmer of modern times must be more methodically 

 prepared for the place he is to fill. There was a day, 

 and not a long distant one either, when it would seem 

 anybody would make a farmer. A lad, whose conduct 

 or wits hardly fitted him for anything "better," was 

 put to it as a ready-made business, in which he could 

 not well go wrong so long as he did just as the people 

 had done there before him. 



Strange as it may sound, we have but very 

 little improved upon this. Like the poet or the 

 prophet, the agriculturist is still a heaven-born genius. 

 If he is really well educated, it i'^ as anything but as a 

 farmer; and if indifferently, he is even less prepared 

 for our present reading of what such an occupation 

 should he. The latter is now by f\n- the greater evil of 

 the two. In a past age, it was held to be a very fatal 

 mistake to bring up a boy above his business; and the 

 other extreme was but the too common consequence. 

 If he was not to be " a fine gentleman," he was an 



