THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



35^^ 



subsequently it was raised to ^90 or £100 per annum. 

 The result of which was, to exclude the vast majority of 

 tenant-farmers' sons from the benefit of the institution ; 

 he took it that it was now meant solely for the educa- 

 tion of the sons of landholders and their stewards. 

 The Rev. Mr. James said, on education, there were 

 excellent villaote schools where farmers' sons could get a 

 good and cheap education. Mr. Walton warned his 

 brother tenant-farmers on no account to allow their 

 children to be educated at a village charity school. lie 

 had no pride about him ; still he did not see why the 

 sons of farmers should be put in such a. position 

 that his shepherd and labourer might be able to say that 

 their sons had been brought up with, and were as well 

 educated as the farmer's sons. He was as desirous as 

 any man of seeing the sons of renting-farmers better 

 educated. Mr. Bond had proved to them the necessity 

 of better education and discipline for young farmers, 

 and partly shown them the way to accomplish it ; but 

 instead of educating them at a village charity school, 

 he (Mr. Walton) would show them the way to give 

 their sons the very best education at a small cost. The 

 farming community of England was supposed to em- 

 ploy capital to the amount of six hundred millions. 

 With such a capital are farmers' sons to be educated and 

 classed with labourers' sons ? It is calculated that the 

 rent of meadow and cultivated land is about 35,000,000 ; 

 1 per cent, per annum would be £"350,000—8 fair 

 capital to begin with ; in twenty years at common in- 

 terest, seven millions. If they were united and would sup- 

 port the fund that he recommended, they could not only 

 clothe and educate the orphans of farmers, but every 

 one of their children could have the very best education 

 at the least possible cost. 



Mr. J. C. Neshit (Kennington) was of opinion that 

 there was a distinct line of education which ought to be 

 recommended for agriculturists. He was not then re- 

 ferring merely to pecuniary cost, because as education 

 advanced, the class of persons competent to give the 

 sort of instruction that the farmer most wanted would 

 increase, and thus the expense would be diminished. As 

 regarded the education of young men who were destined 

 for agricultural pursuits, it must be clear to all present 

 that it should commence with the laying of the founda- 

 tion, consisting of those moral principles which ought 

 to govern men in their every-day life (Hear, hear). 

 Without these as a basis, he believed that any super- 

 structure of mere intellectual knowledge that might be 

 raised would be most insecure (Hear, hear). Religious 

 instruction, therefore, should constitute the foundation of 

 every system of education. This should be succeeded by 

 the gradual culture of the mind, and habits of observa- 

 tion and reflection. Observation came first in order. 

 A child, whether intended for agricultural or for other 

 pursuits, ought to have his powers of observation first 

 brought into action by placing various objects before 

 him, and letting him exercise his natural faculties in 

 marking their quantities and sorts. To understand the 

 difference, for example, between a pebble that was round 

 and one that was square was no doubt in itself a small 

 and insignificant thing ; but it was such minutiae as that 



which lay at the very root of sound education (Hear* 

 hear). As that went on, the child intended to be 

 educated for agricultural pursuits should be instructed 

 in the nature of the various objects by which he was 

 surrounded on the farm. He ought to be taught some- 

 thing about the direction of the strata and the nature of 

 the soils which he might meet with : something of their 

 chemical properties, and those of the water that fell from 

 the heavens ; of the air he breathed ; of the effect of 

 keeping the ground untilkd and of tilling it, and expos- 

 ing it to the action of the air ; something of the nature 

 of plants, not only those which he would have to cul- 

 tivate, but also those which he would have to root up 

 and extirpate ; in short, sometliing of the natural pro- 

 perties of everything with which he would have to do 

 when he became a farmer. It did not follow that 

 he need be a perfect geologist, chemist, botanist, and 

 philosopher ; but he should possess sufficient know- 

 ledge to enable him to understand the works of those 

 who entered more deeply into philosophical inquiries 

 than the farmer could be expected to do, and thus to 

 appropriate to his own use the information supplied by 

 other people. With this education there must, without 

 doubt, be combined a good knowledge of arithmetic, 

 and an acquaintance with mathematics to the extent 

 of mensuration and surveying, so far as means would 

 allow. All this might be furnished at schools ; though 

 it was not done generally, at present, simply because 

 there were not a sufHcient number of men so educated 

 as to be capable of disseminating such knowledge. The 

 time would, he believed, speedily arrive when, with the 

 means that were being adopted for the purpose, a suffi- 

 cient body of teachers would be provided, and then the 

 objection on the score of expense, to which Mr. Walton 

 'had referred, would be removed, and the education for 

 which farmers were now paying i,'100 a-year would be 

 got for £25. With regard to the subsequent education, 

 he thought it must be perfectly clear to every gentleman 

 at all acquainted with practical agriculture, that an at- 

 tempt to teach practical farming in an educational es- 

 tablishment would be just as absurd as an attempt to 

 teach civil engineering at Oxford (Hear, hear). They 

 must educate the boy, so as first to give him his general 

 knowledge, and then the special instruction necessary 

 for the business which he had to follow ; and it is always 

 desirable to send him to a practical man to learn 

 the business itself. Our forefathers were well ac- 

 quainted with this kind of necessity, when they used 

 to apprentice their sons for seven years, not merely that 

 they might acquire a knowledge of their business, but 

 that they might get disciplined in it. No man could 

 take up an art, and practise it successfully, without first 

 going through the whole of it, so that afterwards when 

 he came to act on his own responsibility he would be 

 able to say, " I know how to do this, and 1 know how 

 to do that, for I have seen it done before, and have done 

 it myself." The education of the boy in the art of 

 agriculture ought to be separated from the scientific 

 portion of his education. First, there should be a good 

 general education ; then there should be founded upon 

 that as much acquaintance as possible with those sciences 



