A Journey to London in 1840. 145 



\Vestmoreland, and Cumberland, there they have stone fences or 

 dxkes as we have throughout Scotland. The hedgerows, I ha\-e 

 said, are rude and inelegant, and so they are. They are planted, 

 I suppose, with sufficient care, but the\- seem afterwards to be 

 entirely neglected. They appear never to have been cleaned or 

 weeded. They are generally strengthened by a ditch being 

 planted alongside of them, and the people seem to trust more to 

 the ditch than to the hedge. At least the hedge grows up amid 

 neglect. The thorns of which it is composed are of all degrees 

 of height and width, and gaps occupy no small proportion of the 

 line. These vacuities are .sometimes filled up with stakes, some- 

 times with weeds, and often with both. Such is the luxuriance of 

 the weeds and such the general inattention that while the hedge 

 seems choked with wee(Js the ditch is in\-isil)le. The hedgerows 

 thus not only form a \ery ineffectual fence, Init thev occupy too 

 much space, being often, including the ditch, from two ro five feet 

 wide. When we take into consideration the extent of hedgerows 

 in England and the ground occupied by them, it is not too much to 

 sa_\- that a twentieth part of the soil is absorbed by them, that is 

 about one million acres. This matter is better arranged in Scot- 

 land, where, generally speaking, stone fences prevail and the 

 ground is ploughed as near to them as possible. Indeed, I have 

 known the spade use<l to do what the plough could not overtake. 



England, while she possesses a genial climate and a compara- 

 tively fertile soil, pursues a system of agriculture quite unworthy 

 of these advantages. She is half-a-century behind Scotland in 

 this respect. During the 400 or 500 miles I travelled in the sister 

 kingdom I never saw so few as two horses in a plough or harrow. 

 The number varied from three to five, but I was told that six is not 

 altogether unknown. Draining is not .systematically practised. 

 E\-en manuring seems not well understood. I judge partly from 

 the circumstance that I saw almost no composts of any size during 

 my wanderings — not more than half-a-dozen. In Scotland I 

 would have seen twenty times that number in the same distance in 

 agricultural areas. 



The causes of this backward state of things are easily ex- 

 plained. (1) The English tenants have no leases except from year 

 to year. They are tenants at will. They are always in the power 

 of their landlords. Hence they ne\'er impro\-e or their improve- 

 ments are imperceptible. The system paralyses all enterprise or 



