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THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



power over another — no indirect slavery ; every one exerting 

 himself for the general, as well as the individual, or familj' 

 good. We ought not to be aa brute animals and plants are — 

 the strong trampling down the weak. We have a moral sensei 

 a knowledge of good and tvll, to direct us (of which we may 

 term the ■principles of Christianity the simple embodiment), 

 and he who is not so actuated is a mere brute. Every thing 

 opposed to our agricultural prosperity, to the general good, 

 should be put down— quietly pu* down. If it is not, it will 

 be, some time, unquietly ; or the British race will go down. 



We are not singular in our mischievous land system. It 

 would seem that the landlords were the bane of the earth''8 

 fertility all the world over. In the East Indies, as was wont 

 also to be in Ireland, there are two seta of landlords — the 

 primary,"and secondary or middlemen — who have together 

 10 ground down the farmer, that the amount of rental has 

 been in many places raised to three-fourths of the whole pro- 

 duce. Hence, from the absolute poverty of the farmer, and 

 insecurity, the land is reduced to the lowest pitch of exhaus- 

 tion ; and the means of irrigation, so necessary in arid sea- 

 sons, once so extensively pursued, allowed to fall into ruin. 

 Of this wretched condition of the Indian farmers — the most 

 grinding indirect slavery, and agriculture going to wreck — 

 the present terrible famine in the north-west provinces is the 

 result. Again, in the United States the cultivating landlords 

 are the destroyers of fertility. When the forest is cleared 

 away, there generally exists a foot or more of fine black mould. 

 The possessor subjects this to the most severe treatment ; 

 crops it in the most exhaustiug manner for some 15 years; 

 not unfrequently driving out his manure, in winter, upon the 

 frozen river, to be got clear oflf withont perceptible defilement 

 in the spring, by floatage when the great freshets come down. 

 (Our city system defiles the rivers all the year round). The 

 result is, that in the course of some 15 years, the whole vege- 

 table matter in the soil, the chief principle of fertility, is ex- 

 hausted, and only a poor yellow or reddish earth remains, not 

 worth culture.* The fertility-destroyer upon this enters upon 

 the forest anew, again to commence his process of exhaustion, 

 even more perfectly carried out than is done by the Scotch 

 farmer towards the end of his lease. At the Cape the laud- 

 lord-cultivator adopts a different system. Too indolent 

 to drive out his manure, or not having in most cases a 

 river near, he, when his manure has accumulated in hills 

 around him, removes his dwellings aud homestead to some 

 other place of his estate. Need I mention here that the far- 

 mer-system of culture, in an old densely-peopled manufacture- 

 exporting country, more especially where estates are large, 

 is economically much more calculated to be productively- 

 advantageous than landlord culture. The landlord in this 

 case, where land becomes so valuable, is too rich, too much 

 disposed to luxury and to act the great sei^Heuj-, to be inclined 

 to attend industriously to the important minutiae of agricul- 

 ture. All that is wanted is, to give the farmer freedom to act 

 for his own and his country's good. 



A healthy condition of the land occupancy is incomparably 

 the most important object in social economy. Is it to be 

 endured that the wealth of the British Empire, the vigour of 

 the British race, should suflfer from this ignoble taste of our 

 landlords? I see no reason why they should not improve in 

 taste — why they should continue to act the paltry despot; 

 aware, as they profess to be, that crushing despotism— that 

 want of protection to property— is antagonistic to industrial 

 prosperity. We see in consequence of this intolerable bar to 

 agricultural improvement, that the out-door working popula- 

 tion of the country, where only the stamina of race can be up- 

 held, are very much Icia ja nuinberi to what they would be 



under protection to property invested in agriculture, in a con- 

 tinued course of land enrichment, when two sheaves would be 

 produced for one, aud the out-door working population two for 

 one. On the contrary, we see the manufacturing in-door 

 population increasing rapidly from year to year. To what is 

 this to lead ? A degeneracy of the home British race, and 

 decline aud fall of the home British Empire. 



Numbers of our landlords are kind and generous in a high 

 degree — greatlj' improved within the last age : yet still we see 

 no prospect of an improved system of land occupancy — no pro- 

 tection to property invested in the permanent improvement of 

 the soil. Without this their kindness and generosity is of 

 small avail; only serves to bolster up this "greatest national 

 evil.'' Tenant-right to improvement of the soil, and nothing 

 else, can place British agriculture upon a sound basis. 



Classes of men in their corporate capacity are said to be 

 completely selfish; yet I hope these principles will not apply 

 to the landlords of Britain. I have no class prejudices, but 

 from my position I caunot brook that our landlord class should 

 be supposed dead to patriotic feeling, destitute of any desire 

 to forward the improvement of their country and race — that 

 they should have receded back (as a body) to the lowest man- 

 savage of the stone or paradisan period, without a moral sense* 

 like uuto the other animals of the forest, although now and 

 then a specimen of such may be appearing, I hope and trust 

 that, as a body, they participate in the moral sense attained by 

 civilized man, when he rose to the knowledge of good and evil, 

 strangely travestied by Eousseau, and the poetic imagination 

 of the east, into a fall, and the wilderness into a pa radise 

 The present era is opening up a new order of things, in senti- 

 ment, as well as judicious or prudent necessity, which may 

 lead to reform of this noxious system. In a neighbouring 

 country we know what took place in consequence of the de- 

 fects of a landlord class, and the want of timely reform, as told 

 in our infant rhymes. 



" Hurly Burly brak its bands. 

 Ran through all the Kingis lands ; 

 The King and a' his men 

 Couldna baud Hurly Burly agen." 



Should the improvement of tbe British soil continue to be 

 prevented by this very injurious occupaucj', and the farmer 

 class, comprising about half of the middle classes.kept in slavish 

 dependence, as exists in the greater part of England, it is not 

 easy to say what the result may be. I am aware of the bene- 

 volence of many of the landlords of England, and the well- 

 being, though dependence, of their tenantry ; but the system 

 is naught, and does not call forth the energies of the tenantry. 

 A law of protection of capital invested in land improvement) 

 a tenant-right to a tenant-created wealth, together with the 

 greatly-increased emulation and competition to excel, which 

 would ensue, would very soon put a different face upon the 

 British Isles. The increase of depth and richness to which 

 the British soil may be brought in this climate, where soil is 

 more accumulative than iu arid hot countries, aud where so 

 much food aud manure is imported, it is impossible to estimate- 



I hope that a subject, beyond all others important to the 

 prosperity of the British Empire and race, will meet the most 

 careful consideration of the Legislature, and the best practical 

 means be adopted of placing agriculture upon an improving 

 basis. It is in many things easy to point out defects and to 

 destroy, but it is not easy to correct the errors into which 



* From the evanescent nature of the black mould which has 

 collected under the forest-shade, to preserve it would require the 

 most careful treatment. Tbe exhaling power of ihe ardent sum- 

 mer sun in the United States Being very exhausting to the 

 vegetable-collecfed matter in llie Roil, when exposed by ploueh- 

 iny in a nakeiS state. 



