272 AGRICULTURAL IMPROVEMENT SOCIETIES. 



Association in London, and listened with attention to the can- 

 did and eloquent, yet powerless, speeches, delivered upon that 

 occasion powerless, because they contained no proposition 

 for ameliorating the condition of those classes that comprise 

 the great mass of idle hands ; a mass, however, for which the 

 League profess much sympathy,, and assert that the manufac- 

 turers could employ with a free trade in corn an assertion 

 which, however delusive, carries weight, because the poor, like 

 an invalid at the last extremity, will submit to the nostrums of 

 any quack rather than relinquish hope. 



Could Government be induced to retrace its steps with 

 respect to the Canada Bill, the Corn Laws, and the Tariff, 

 even then the population in agricultural districts would be re- 

 dundant. For although field-labour might be increased, yet 

 under our present system of farming it is impossible that the 

 culture of wheat, of barley, and of turnips should provide 

 employment for the great majority, comprised of weaker hands. 



But were flax added to the rotation of crops, the landlord 

 and tenant could so regulate the demand for labour as not only 

 to meet the requirements of the rural, but of the surplus 

 manufacturing population also. Five years ago I advanced the 

 same theory. I now venture to enforce it with a confidence 

 resulting from experience. 



It will be necessary to form district societies, based upon the 

 principles and regulated by the rules of the National Flax 

 and Agricultural Improvement Association, by which means 

 information would be disseminated, success ensured, and the 

 defeat of Cobden, with his party, rendered certain. 



At the present time the value of flax and linseed is daily 

 rising at market, affording remuneration to the grower, while 

 corn and meat, on the contrary, can only be produced at a 

 ruinous price to the farmer ; an argument sufficiently strong 

 in favour of the cultivation of flax and the fattening of cattle 

 upon the seed, independent of all other considerations, and 

 which, I am sure, will induce many of my correspondents at 

 least to try the following experiments : 



Let four or six acres of land, intended for turnips, be equally 

 divided, manured, and treated in every other respect alike ; 

 one half to be sown with turnips ; the other with linseed and 



