TGR sere esr? 
TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 147 
STATISTICS. 
Account of the System of Croft Husbandry and the Reclamation of Waste 
Lands, chiefly by Spade Culture, adopted at Gairloch in Ross-shire since 
1846, and its results as illustrating the conditions under which the labour 
of Paupers and Criminals may safely be made productive. By W. P. 
Autson, M.D., V.P.R.S.Ed., Professor of Physic in the University of 
Edinburgh. 
Tue objects of this paper were to establish, chiefly by statistical evidence, the fol- 
lowing propositions :— 
= 1, That where the system of petite culture practised in Belgium had been intro- 
duced in the arable lands in Ross-shire, i. ¢. stall-feeding of stock, collection and 
ceconomical management of manure, proper rotation of crops, and careful cultivation 
of small crofts by the spade, the result had been almost exactly the same as in Bel- 
gium, viz. that a family of five persons could be maintained on such land, in comfort, 
on a croft of five or six acres, and pay a rent of £10 per annum to the landlord; and 
that the reclamatioti of arable but waste lands for this purpose could be effected in a 
very few years by the population now in their neighbourhood under due regulations 
as to instruction and inspection. 
2. That great tracts of such land, now absolutely unproductive, exist in Britain, 
and at least 1,500,000 acres in Ireland, known by official surveys to be at least equal 
to that in Belgium, requiring only a small outlay of capital for draining, &c., and 
large outlay of labour, to make them equally productive as that in Belgium or the 
best of that at Gairloch. 
8. That the objections made to the productive employment of paupers or criminals 
on such land, however just where applicable, are in most such cases distinctly inappli- 
eable; those objections being,—1. That pauper farms generally prove failures, and 
are a loss instead of a profit to the parish. 2. That the employment of paupers in any 
productive employment interferes with the labour market, and injures independent 
labourers. ΤῸ the first objection the answer made is, that it is not necessary, in order 
to establish the importance of productive employment of paupers, that they should 
produce a profit for the parish ; they may be very usefully employed even in a merely 
ceconomical view, if they only effect a saving to the rate-payers; who must feed, 
clothe and lodge them and their families whether they employ them or not. To the 
second objection it is answered, that lands on which no work has been done within 
the memory of man, are not in the labour market, and any productions raised on them 
are a clear addition to the wealth of a country, and no injury to any other labourers; 
and that all that sound political ceconomy requires is, not that the labour of paupers 
(or of eriminals) should yield no remuneration, but only that such remuneration as 
it does yield should be a clear addition to the resources of a country, not the substitus 
tion of the produce of their labour for that of independent labourers. 
4, That great numbers of able-bodied destitute poor have been maintained in the 
workhouses in Ireland since 1846 in absolute idleness, and at a great expense to the 
rate-payers there and to Britain likewise; that many have died in Ireland of the effects 
of destitution, and great numbers more have wandered thence and caused expense 
and Carried disease wherever the English language is spoken; who might have been 
employed in reclaiming these waste lands with a saving, if not a profit 10 those who 
have thus supported them ; examples having been recently furnished by the experience 
of several English unions, particularly Chorlton and Sheffield, of the reclamation of 
waste lands by pauper labour, with a decided saving to the parishes, even within a 
. very few years. 
5. That when landed proprietors, as in Ireland, have their land occupied by a 
redundant and destitute population, for which they are legally bound to make some 
provision, their natural resource—as the best authorities, e.g. Mr. Mill, Sir R. Kane, 
and Mr. Nicholls, Poor Law Commissioner in Ireland, agree—ought to be the esta- 
blishment of the petite cultwre as in Belgium, and as imitated at Gairloch; and that 
. any law which impedes the sale of portions of their property for that purpose is truly a 
suicidal law, injurious to all the interests of the country. 
6. That a poor law providing for the unemployed able-bodied, rightly worked, may 
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