390 Agricultural Jottings from the General Rejjort of the 



(f.) Organization of labour on the large farms. 



AH these subjects for inquiry have been dealt with in the pre- 

 ceding pages. I, however, submit that the vastness of the work of 

 reporting upon the agriculture of the Austro-Hungarian Empire 

 can only be realized by those who attempt it. I have already 

 remarked that many whole provinces were never entered, and the 

 foregoing Report is more precisely an account of Hungarian 

 than of Austro-Hungarian farming. Every one knows that a 

 foreigner is apt to fall into grave, and also into amusing errors, 

 in describing the manners and customs of peoples not his own. 

 I shall not be surprised if some such errors have crept into 

 the foregoing pages. I may, however, state that, owing to the 

 custom of printing reports and tabular statements upon the large 

 estates for the guidance of the managers, also owing to my own 

 printed queries, which were returned to me by the Stewards 

 at their leisure, and lastly by noting various observations and 

 answers to numerous questions then and there, I am able to 

 show satisfactory proof of the correctness of the statements 

 made in this Report. 



XIV. — Agricultural Jottings from the General Report of the 

 Census of England and Wales for the year 1871. By J. 

 Dent Dent, of Ribston Hall, Wetherby. 



It is sometimes said that any result which the student desires 

 may be deduced from the study of statistics, although the inves- 

 tigation of long columns of figures and tables of population at 

 first sight presents a very uninviting aspect. No one, however, 

 who reads the General Report of the Census of England and 

 Wales for 1871, will doubt that it contains a history of which a 

 nation may well be proud, and that the record of progress which 

 is inscribed in its pages attracts the reader like a grand romance. 

 It is the story of a people ever proceeding onwards — increasing 

 in numbers, in industry, and in wealth — whose condition im- 

 proves year by year ; not too numerous for well-paid industries at 

 home, yet ever sending out fresh streams of workers into other 

 lands, where they become at once producers of England's re- 

 quirements, and consumers of the products of her industry, fur- 

 nishing supplies to the parent land, and adding to her wealth, 

 while assuring their own. Nearly one hundred years ago Dr. 

 Price wrote in alarm of a decaying population ; and Malthus 

 somewhat later uttered warnings against the evils which awaited 

 a people increasing more rapidly than their means of procuring 

 subsistence ; but in this English nation there is united such a 

 happy mixture of boldness and confidence in the future, and yet 



