THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



389 



open to reason and jastice, and to those of the landlord class I 

 also appeal. 



I feel here disposed to wander a little wide from the sub- 

 ject, to point out the importance of exportitg manufacturers 

 and great capitalists being resident in a country, as is the case 

 of Britain — what may be termed primary sources of wealth; 

 ho V that there is primary and secondary (and I may add ter- 

 tiary) industry : instance a rich mine, or exporting manufac- 

 turing city, producing agricultural prosperity, and a numerous 

 agricultural population, around it; and the mine becoming 

 exhausted, or the manufacture declining, that the agriculture, 

 and agricultural population, generally sinks /jart passu. Thus, 

 rich consumers at hand is everything to agriculture, where the 

 produce is most of it bulky, of expensive carriage, or perith- 

 able, so as not to bear distant carriage. Need I further men- 

 tion that another or third industrial class follows the primary 

 and secondary — bakers, tailors, teachers, doctors, &c. — still 

 more deppndent than the agricultural, as their industry is still 

 more locally limited. The high enrichment of the soil, and 

 dense rural population of the adjacent country, is of great im- 

 portance to the prosperity and health of the manufacture- 

 exporting city,furni!^hing to the city in return rich consumers at 

 hand, and in recruiting the naturally declining city population 

 with the frtsh blood and stamina of a couutry-bred race. It 

 thus follows that' the enrichment of our soil is everybody's 

 business; that a deep debt of gratitude is due by our land- 

 lords to our exporting manufacturing city, and mining popu- 

 lation, who have doubled the value of the British laud, com- 

 pared with that cf the Continent; and, above all things, that 

 no system of land occupancy greatly inimical to agricultural 

 advancement ought to be tolerated. 



As science in farming extends, the amount of capital re- 

 quired by the farmer is always increasing ; in fact, is coming, 

 on inferior soils, almost to equal the fee-simple of the land, im. 

 poverished as it usually is at tenant vacating, where a lease 

 has existed. Expediency and justice demand that the British 

 people should reap the full benefit of the capabilities of the 

 British ground for improvement. Reason demands that the 

 British laud should be opened up to the full influence of Bri- 

 tish capital. Utility demands that the stil may be fertilized 

 as far as, from its position (vicinity to a large and wealthy po- 

 pulation), its enrichment would return a fair profit upon the 

 outlay. Need I mention that the outlay can be directed to 

 permaueut improvement, as well as for shorter periods ? It is 

 strange, but not the less true, that Legislative assistance 

 should be required to protect the British farmer, not from the 

 plunder- loving French soldier, but from the British landlord. 

 No sooner does the tenant expend capital in improving the 

 landlord's ground, than the rent is raised to him, or at least 

 may be (in many cases is raised) : acting equally as a pre- 

 ventive of outlay. Under this wretched thrale to remove at 

 aix months' warning, the English farmer's policy is to take as 

 much as possible out of the laud, and put as little as possible 

 jn. That the farmer should expfud money in improvement, 

 under this insufferable bondage, where another man has power 

 at any time to expel him by a word or dash of his pen, is 

 hardly to be expected. To lay out money on the land under 

 such shameful dependance is naturally hateful to the tenant, 

 from a sense cf the injustice, even to the extent of self-injury, 

 and not a tithe of the capital that would be invested, under a 

 secure tenant right, is invested. No capitalist of spirit would 

 submit to such a degrading position. What is needed is, a 

 right to the improvement and enrichment of the soil the tenant 

 shall effect, in case of removal, and the yearly rent to be fixed 

 at a certain number of bushels of grain per acre ; and should 

 circumstances ensue to render the farm more valuable, that 

 the landlord receive the benefit. 



The want oi a tenant's right to improvements made by him 

 represses agriculture in England a hundred times over all that 

 our agricultural societies, prize competitions, ploughing matches, 

 &c., can forward. The system of procuring Government assist- 

 ance to landlords, in draining, is only a clumsy and expensive 

 way of doing that which the tenant, protected by tenant right, 

 would himself do much better. Nothing can compensate, 

 nothing can ward off the blighting influence of insecurity, 

 whether as aftecting skill, industry, or outlay of capital. The 

 stimulus of security to reap the fruits of his labour being 

 wanting to the tenant, all their adventitious schemes of en- 

 couragement, their artificial forcing, will not avail— cannot 

 achieve impossibilities— cannot alter a law of nature. Pro- 

 tection of property is protection of life, or rather life itself. 

 The want of it, in the case of capital, &c., laid out in agricul- 

 ture, has, I have no doubt, prevented millions from existing in 

 Britain ; and these of our most robust, healthy, and happy 

 population. 



Even in Scotland, where leases are given, things are not 

 ordered much better. There the farmer receives the land at 

 entry in a very exhausted state, so much so that one-half of 

 his lease of nineteen years is spent in restoring some degree 

 of fertility, again to be exhausted in the last half, in order to 

 recover the capital he had found necessary to lay out during 

 the first half. Under this system of alternate .periods of fet- 

 tilizing and exhausting of the soil, much capital is disadvan- 

 tageously employed, and in a great measure wasted, compared 

 to what it would be in a rational continued process of enrich- 

 ment of the land. The want of tenant right to improvement 

 of the soil, under the English system of no lease, prevents the 

 process of fertilizing being heartily entered into. The Scots 

 system alternately creates and destroys. 



In taking a parting and comprehensive view of this most im- 

 portant subject, we see the capital of the Britiiih empire pre- 

 vented, by the want of security, by the want of a tenant-right, 

 from being directed to the improvement of the British land, 

 and so driven out of the country, to very precarious foreign in- 

 vestment, when it might most profitably, and more securely, 

 be invested at home. We see that the energies of the farmer 

 are not called forth by natural competitive selection ; we find 

 the farmer fettered, degraded, in complete dependence upon 

 the will of another, who can at any time drive him from his 

 home, and piratically seize upon any improvement he has 

 made in bis farm. We see the manure of the country, aug- 

 mented by so much foreign food import, which, rightly di- 

 rected, would render Britaio the richest soil in Europe, swept 

 away, in United States fashion, by our rivers, defiling their 

 purify, destroying our river fisheries, and also poisoning or 

 asphyxiating our riverside population as well as the fishes. 

 We see our land, instead of being gradually enriched iu soil, and 

 the Boil also doubled in depth (as, were the shackles to im- 

 provement removed, it would be), retained in an exhausted and 

 unproductive condition — not allowed to be enriched, I am 

 ashamed to state, by the grasping desire for despot power of 

 a landlord class. Need I hint that conveyance of produce 

 from foreign is becoming every year more facile ? Hence there 

 is a necessity for everything repressive of improvement in 

 home agriculture being removed. 



I intended to have closed here, but the magnitude and fla- 

 grant injustice of the evil — the vast national injury — force me 

 to proceed. I am anxious that the landholders should view 

 this subject aright — impartially view it : myself cultivat. 

 ;ng my own lands, and my sons cultivating their own 

 lands, I speak impartially. In a civilized country we ought 

 no doubt all to be dependent upon one another; kindly, 

 but not despotically dependent ; not crushiogly, not 

 destructively dependent. No class ought to have despotic 



