410 



THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



that no comparison can be made from the extent of 

 population as to the quantity flowing. The effect 

 of the use of the deodorising fluid is very per- 

 ceptible, as there is no smell, whereas the sewage 

 scent was clearly discernible both at Edinburgh 

 and Mansfield, in the main channels, before it had 

 passed on to the land. I could distinctly perceive 

 it, although the hills around Edinburgh were 

 covered with snow, and the thermometer stood at 

 40 deg., and the report of several persons residing 

 near the sewer water course was very unfavourable 

 as to its state during the summer months." 



I have much pleasure in being able to add, that 

 the 292 acres of land at Beddington, in Surrey, 

 whicli is held by the Croydon Board of Health, 

 and to v/hich tlie sewage of Croydon has only 

 very recently been partially applied, has just. been 

 subleased by the Board to a responsible farmer 

 and cow-keeper, at an advanced rent of two 

 hundred and forty- eight pounds, viz., for what the 

 Board pay £1,252 per annum, they will receive 

 £1,500, The 292 acres are composed of 251 



acres of arable, and 41 acres of grass, and it is to 

 the grass land only that the sewage has hitherto 

 been applied ; but the eftect is so decidedly excellent, 

 that the incoming tenant intends to immediately 

 lay down and apply the sewage to all that portion 

 of the land which is now arable that can be ir- 

 rigated, and this will include nearly the whole of 

 the 251 acres. 



We may, even from these rapid practical notices, 

 derive very useful information. That the manure 

 of our domestic animals has long been made in 

 enlarging amounts, and of a more enriching 

 quality, is certain. That this onward progress is 

 still making, there is as little doubt ; sewage 

 irrigation, too, is extending. We need not, indeed, 

 fear that anything like perfection will ever be 

 attained in this or any other branch of the 

 agriculturist's manifold cares. The skill of our 

 great cultivators has always hitherto been nearly 

 equal to the demands made upon them, and there 

 are no symptoms of either their science or their 

 zeal being exhausted. 



THE FARMER AND THE FRANCHISE. 



That the tenant-farmers have in reality no repre- 

 sentatives in Parliament is a very old story. " The 

 Agricultural Interest," as so called, or" The Country 

 Party," as otherwise identified, will, as a rule, be 

 spoken to as the country gentkmen, who simply re- 

 present themselves. When a farmer's own question 

 conies on, the Squirearchy careftilly keep away, or sit 

 in sulky siknce, asking themselves what business Mr. 

 Caird has to interfere in such matters ? Nay, in a very 

 recent instance, the county members actually opposed 

 their constituents, and voted almost to a man that the 

 occupier should have no voice in the heavy expenditure 

 of his own district. Well then may the Reverend Lord 

 Sidney Godolphin Osborne, when considoritig the case 

 of the tenant, refer to the exercise of the franchise as 

 " rather a delicate poiut." His lordship certainly 

 tieats of it delicately enough ; and this passage is per- 

 haps the only piece of specious oratory in his generally 

 able address. Still Lord Sidney professes to speak out 

 even here ; and indeed the subject has been as it were 

 forced upon him, " from the conviction that the truth 

 is rarely spoken about it." In the first place, this is 

 what is too commonly received as the fact : " There 

 are a certain class of writers and speakers who assert 

 that a tenant farmer loses as such his political independ- 

 ence, that his position as a county voter is nullified by 

 Lis becoming a renting ttnaut on any large estate." 

 But his Lordship proceeds at once to deny this : — " I 

 do not credit all the stories I hear of landlords com- 

 pelling their tenantry to vote against their consciences. 

 It may be very true that in the great majority of cases 

 tenants do support those with their votes lor whom 

 they know their landlords are interested, just as in 

 many other matters carried by election, men vote not 

 directly as they regard the merit of the candidate, but 

 to oblige their friends. It is true that most landlords 

 would with regret see it otherwise. But where any 

 question arises affecting the interest of the tenantry as 

 a class, or afll'cting the deep-seated political or religious 

 feelings of individuals, I believe and I hope there are 

 few, if any, landlords who would try to restrain the 

 freest exercise of the franchise," This is very carefully 

 put, but there may be more in it than y/na perhapa in- 



tended. However, at best or worst, tlio tenant in 

 a general way is advised to make the landlord's interest 

 or views his own. The point — one by the way Lord 

 Sidney does not press— is whether, as times go, the 

 farmer can continue, as a duty to himself, to act in this 

 convenient and inditl'ercnt manner?' Should they not, 

 as a class, make it more their business to know some- 

 thing of those gentlemen " in whom their landlords 

 are interested." As T071]/ answers to his mamma, 

 in Goldsmith's comedy, " I don't care so much about 

 disappointing my friends, but I can't ahear to disap- 

 point myself." So the farmer will have to consider 

 whether he should not oblige himself instead of obliging 

 his friends. Lord Sidney believes " one of the great 

 binding supports of our Constitution to be, that landed 

 property should have great political weight, and that it 

 is most important to the permanent interest of the 

 renting occupiers that it should do so." Taking our 

 opinion from the experience of the past, it is hard to 

 find the force of this. What of late years has the great 

 political weight of landed property done for the per- 

 manent interest of the renting occupier ? Is there a 

 single act, intent, or even speech, in the history of many 

 sessions, where landed property has done, or attempted 

 to do anything for the renting occupiers, or to lank 

 them of a class in the state ? Have they not ra- 

 ther been taken as part and parcel of landed property, 

 without any individual status of their own ? Lord Sid- 

 ney says, " Where one man ever gives a vote from 

 party feeling alone, how many thousands, feeling no 

 real party interest, vote to oblige those whose good- 

 will they desire to preserve ! So far from thinking a 

 tenant who has no pressing conscientious feeling in the 

 matter wrong for voting, as the rule, with his brother- 

 tenants, in support of the landlord's wishes, I think 

 him not only prudent, but in every way justified." 

 This is the very rock the tenant-farmer has split on. 

 He has so far allowed himself to have no " real in- 

 terest," but has voted to oblige those whose good-will 

 he would have. He has admitted of no conscientious 

 feelings, but voted, as a rule, as otheis voted. And what 

 has been the inevitable consequence of such a course 

 of self-negation ? Why, that he has no voice whatever 



I 



