HIGH FARMING. 205 



will be his success. We therefore, with some reluctance, 

 but on conviction, lay aside all sentiment, and approach 

 the subject of agriculture in the driest economical spirit. 



Having thus strictly limited the sense in which only we 

 can consent to use the phrase good farming, we come next 

 to another phrase of modern origin, but which now con- 

 stantly occupies the mouths or pens of all agricultural dis- 

 putants. We like the phrase because it is so very definite 

 and so very unassuming. "High farming" is simply a 

 higher, or more than average, expenditure of money on 

 land, in order to make its agricultural produce greater. 

 Extra expenditure in labour, in manure, or in machinery, 

 is its essence. It passes by the subject of profit and loss. 

 Agricultural journals have been content to record that 

 Lord A., Sir J. B., or Squire C., have, by high farming, 

 extracted thirty tons of swedes per acre from land whose 

 previous produce was only fifteen. The record of the fact 

 has not been accompanied by a balance-sheet. These indi- 

 viduals were spirited agriculturists an epithet which may 

 have been correct, but which sounds rather queer in con- 

 nection with the most plodding occupation under the sun. 

 When the grumblings of the agricultural classes rose 

 higher than the recognised standard, and began to be 

 somewhat of a nuisance to their non-agricultural fellow- 

 citizens, the thirty tons of these spirited individuals were 

 cast in the teeth of their more cowardly brethren, and 

 they were bid to go and do likewise. They demurred to 

 the mandate. The demurrer was, in substance, that high 

 farming is not good farming, in the sense to which we have 

 limited the latter phrase. The case is now on for argu- 

 ment at the tribunal of agricultural opinion ; and at the 

 head of this article we have placed before our readers a list 

 of the arguments hitherto brought forward by the most 

 eminent counsel in the cause. 



We must assume two data, in both of which we believe 

 that the conviction of our experienced readers will go along 

 with us. 1st. That the natural produce of average land 



