42 QUARTERLY JOURNAL. 



Another illustration of well-intended but ill-judged legislation 

 for the benefit of the agriculturist, may be drawn from the long 

 established policy of Great Britain. Her landed interest has long 

 been the object of her special regard and special legislation ; she 

 has steadily aimed to secure to her own farmers all the advantages 

 of her own markets, to shut out all possible competition. But 

 with the progressive development of the resources, and the exten- 

 sion of the commerce of that great empire, other interests have 

 been created, and though it cannot be said that they have been 

 wholly uncared for, yet the landed has been the grand interest. 

 The result of this special legislation for the farmer's good is, that 

 those interests have been rendered antagonists striving for the 

 mastery, whose natural state is one of mutual co-operation for a 

 common good. It has been w^ell observed by a writer in the Lon- 

 don Quarterly Review, " that the agricultural and commercial 

 portions of our population are embarked in the same bottom, 

 forming the complex cargo of the great galleon of the state, in 

 which they must sink or swim together." 



We are free to confess that we are not at all desirous to see any 

 such legislation in behalf of the American farmer. So long as 

 our tariff is based upon the principle of protection, he unques- 

 tionably should have his share of it. But we regard this as a 

 matter of little moment, because our agriculturists are as sure of 

 our home market without a protective tariff as with one. 



The great thing, we apprehend, which the farmer needs, is to 

 know how^ to make his land in the highest degree productive, at 

 the least possible expense. We look upon this as the grand pro- 

 blem in agricultural science ; and it is one which cannot be satis- 

 factorily resolved without the efficient and judicious interposition 

 of the legislature. And w^hen we consider how intimately the 

 solution of this problem is connected, not only with the primary 

 profit of the farmer, but the physical happiness of all classes of 

 the community, no man wall, surely, venture to say that this inter- 

 position should be denied. It is a fact which may well seem 

 strange to us, that while the mechanic, the manufacturer, the man 

 of commerce, by applying the discoveries of modern science to 

 their respective pursuits, have increased their wealth to an extent 

 which arithmetic can hardly compute, the farmer, until within a 

 very short period, has remained quite unconscious that the same 



