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THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



occupatk'ua ; but tlieae passages never produce more solid 

 effect thau a cueer, because, iu reality, a country life has no 

 attractions for an English mcchatiic, unless it be iu the shape 

 of a su'iuiban garden ; and the agricultural hbourer, sharp 

 enough to have ambitious aspirations, either becomes a navvy 

 or a drainer or a mechanic, or turns to buying and selliug — 

 the most profitable of a'l pursuits, for a man gifted with bar- 

 gaining talents. Iu Scotlaud— where the law of entail is much 

 more strict and much more commonly put in operation thau 

 in England ; where towns are said to be so beleaguered by en- 

 tailed estates, that building sites are not to Ija had, when most 

 needed, at any price ; and where, too, in certain purely rural 

 districts where mountain pasture is to be had — the intensely 

 frugal people can ically live on their oatmeal, with the help 

 of a cow's grass — the cry for small farms seems more really 

 popukr. It is taken up by eloquent clerical agitators — 

 and the editor of a Scotch agricultural journal some- 

 times writes as if he would like to see an army of cottage- 

 farmers dotted over these damp, mountainous districts, 

 whence, at the cost of much heart-suffering, they were re- 

 moved more than thirty years, and replaced by sheep. One 

 of the clerical orators has even demanded a law for com- 

 pelling landowners to sell their land in small lots. A 

 wild notion, only worth notice as showing the degree 

 of irritation which prevails in Scotland on the subject of 

 land. 



At the great Edinburgh labour discussion meeting, it will 

 be remembered that the agent of au estate in Aunandale re- 

 ported favourable results from a system of leasing for nice- 

 teen years, to middle-aged labourers with accumulated capita), 

 plots of land for building dwellings, with grass for their cows. 

 These leasehold tenants were found to be the parents and 

 guardians of a very well-trained class of farm servants. We 

 should like to know hoj? these cottier farmers live — that is, 

 what is it that satisfies them in food and clothing, and by what 

 means they get the money returns, the amount of which is 

 important, if a cottier farmer is to be better off than a day- 

 labourer. In England, for many years past, our experience of 

 cottier-farms has not been encouraging ; probably because the 

 habits of the people are too expensive for success. The more 

 favourable specimens were to be found where good pasture 

 enabled dairying to be carried on, in conjunction with hand- 

 loom linen-weaving, as, for instance, on the Middleham estate, 

 near Manchester. But you cannot get a cotter's son to be 

 content with bread, butter-milk, and potatoes, when he be- 

 gins to associate with factory -hands and mechanics, who live on 

 beef and beer; and unless a cottier farmer has money saved by 

 frugal living, the first unfavourable season ruins him. 



Every year it becomes more plain that, in our modern highly 

 productive, highly artificial system of agriculture, a farmer must 

 make his profits on an average of several years. Few English 

 or Irish cottage farmers are prepared to do this. On a consi- 

 derable estate of cottage farms near Cirencester, through which 

 we recently passed, it is said that the people live famously when 

 they get their crops iu, and ate pinched for all the rest of the 

 year. A medical man reports thit there is s considerable ex- 

 cess of sickness amongst these cottage farmers over the farm- 

 labourers of the same district. There are, no doubt, special 

 circumstances under which small farms alone render agricul" 

 tural tillage possible — for instance, in colonies, where labour is 

 dear, and land cheap ; there are other cates, as in Guernsey, 

 Jersey, and parts of Flanders, where the cotta:;e farmers main- 

 tain their position, although they originate no agricultural im- 

 provements. But as a general rule, Arthur Young's maxim 

 holds good : " Great farmers are rich farmers;" and " good cul- 

 ture means much labour," which can only be spared in bad 



times, when perhaps most needed, by a man of capital, who 

 can live on an average of years. 



As it is most probable that whenever, from any cause— a 

 diminution of the American supply of cotton, for instance — 

 the working classes of towns suffer from temporary distress, 

 political agitators will be found attributing that distress to 

 the laws, and customs more powerful than laws, which regu- 

 late the distribution of laud in England, it will be useful to 

 give, before a hot, passionate discussion arises, some account 

 of the district where minute division of property has been 

 most largely and successfully practised. 



The Russian Government, having had the emancipation of 

 the serfs forced on it by necessity, has acted wisely in securing 

 to every serf the hut he lives in and a few acres of ground — 

 enough to afford him and his family a bare subsistence. As 

 there are great difficulties in the way of markets for produce 

 in the interior of Russia, as many of the landowners will not 

 have the meaus of paying money wages to all their emanci- 

 pated serfs, as a system of poor laws would not work in a 

 country where money is so scarce, this measure is, per- 

 haps, the only eitpedient posnble for emancipating the serf*, 

 without creating a nation of dangerous paupers. The 

 framera of this law, confiscating a large share of the estates of 

 the nobles, hope and intend that, by degrees, the serfs may 

 learn to work for wages on farms, as they do now as me- 

 chanics in towns, and that the little lots of laud will do for 

 the state what workhouses and poor-rates do in England — 

 afford a living for the unemployed and able-bodied. 



In England there is no objection to a working man purchasing 

 a few acres of land and cultivating it : that even now is easier, 

 because land is cheaper than in France. But there are solid 

 objections to encouraging a system of small farming, either by 

 laws or by public opinion, because not only would a district 

 of small farms, whether freehold or leasehold, according to all 

 the evidence we have before uf, produce less surplus saleable 

 food over the consumption of the family of cultivators than a 

 farm cultivated with the rotation, the machinery, the horse- 

 power, and the outlay of capital possible where agriculture is 

 conducted on the average scale of English farms, but such a 

 district would be apermauentbar to agricultural improvement. 

 The land of England being held as a matter of security and dig- 

 nicy — as much, at least, as a matter of profitable investment — 

 those tenants are preferred who put into the land at least as 

 much as they take out of it, to others of less capital and less 

 expensive habits. This is the reason there are so many ap- 

 plicants for a farm to let on any great hereditary estate. A 

 farm on a rich peer's property is looked upon as a boon — 

 a favour bestowed — a something equal in value to an 

 annuity. An examination of the history of the progress of 

 British agriculture shows incontestably that all great improve- 

 ments in live stock, in the use of machinery, in the use of ma- 

 nures, and in draining, have been originated and forced on, in 

 the face of the obstacles of prejudices and partial failures, by 

 great tenant farmers and great landlords. The peasant far- 

 mer's whole time and attention is engrossed in living and 

 saving by halfpence ; he has neither time, nor money, nor 

 patience for the experiments that must precede great improve- 

 ments. An ordinary English farmer thinks long before he 

 invests five or six hundred pounds in the great invention, the 

 revolutionizing invention of the age — steam cultivation ! but 

 a peasant farmer has to hold many a consultation with his 

 treasurer — his wife— before he invests in a steel diggiug-fork 

 to cost half-a-guinea. 



The country called iu history Flanders, at present included 

 in the kingdom of Belgium, presents the most favourable as- 

 pect of peasant cultivation. Even in that country we find two 



