78 EUROPEAN AGRICULTURE. 



increased infertility. For the last ten years, the crops of wheat 

 have yielded twenty bushels to the half acre. The twenty 

 years preceding, eighteen bushels was the average. Instances 

 of twenty-seven bushels to the half acre have been known. 

 The half acre of potatoes, with others grown in the garden, are 

 usually fed to pigs, and instances have been known where the 

 cottager has sold twenty pounds worth of pigs and well supplied 

 his own family with bacon. It is common for them to sell from 

 ten to twenty pounds worth of pigs, or pork, per annum, and 

 still keep a good supply for family use. Some of the cottagers, 

 who have been blessed with careful wives and good cows, have 

 sent twelve pounds of butter, per week, to market, during all the 

 flush of the feed. 



&quot; It must be understood, that while the cottager s allotment 

 of land is thus multiplying his comforts, he has a constant sup 

 ply of work, and current wages, from the neighboring farmers. 

 His own farming is done after his master s day s work is com 

 pleted, with perchance a day now and then, as at seed-time and 

 harvest. 



&quot; Happy, comfortable, and superior in condition, as these cot 

 tagers appear, yet the system that makes them so has often been 

 called in question. It has been observed, that the children of 

 cottagers, thus happily situated, are not over anxious to go to 

 service, and not over apt to keep their places when they do go. 

 There appears a latent consciousness about them that the house 

 of their parents is well supplied with bread and bacon. 



&quot; Perhaps the evil, if it be one, has a deeper origin than at 

 first sight appears. May it not be traceable to our social system, 

 the genius of which delights to keep property in large masses, 

 under great proprietors ? These proprietors have a similar predi 

 lection for large divisions of their property large farms, and 

 men of large capital to work them. All this may be well 

 very well suited to the cast-iron consciences of the political 

 economists; but it creates a chasm between the large farmer 

 the farmer of two hundred and fifty acres, with a capital of 

 twenty-five hundred pounds, and the mere laboring cottager. 

 The latter can never hope to pass so great a void. There are no 

 intermediate resting-places. There are no farms of twenty, 

 fifty, or a hundred acres, to which the successful and deserving 

 cottager can be promoted. The steps of the ladder are out. 



