176 AMERICAN FARMS. 



representatives from other classes outnumber the farmers 

 by three to one. These facts prove a decreasing power 

 in the farmers in a matter fraught with vital importance 

 to them. 



Educated men of the professions are necessary for 

 certain positions in Parliament. But the majority of our 

 public men are inclined to encourage large expenditures, 

 elaborate formulas, numberless acts, and to the securing 

 of vast powers to Parliaments — much of all which is 

 decidedly antagonistic to the true interests of the people. 

 After prorogations, they boast of their labors, and the 

 number of their acts passed, many of which will, in the 

 public interest, require repealing. In Mr. Herbert 

 Spencer's " Sins of Legislators," he informs us that in 

 May, 1873, a Mr. Jason, vice-president of one of the law 

 societies of England, publicly stated that from the time 

 of Henry IH. to 1872, there had been passed through 

 Parliament, in England 18,110 public acts, of which four 

 fifths had been wholly or partially repealed. We are in- 

 clined to think, that at no time have politicians been 

 more anxious to magnify the necessity for much legisla- 

 tion than at the present day, and in no portion of the 

 globe more than in some of our own local as well as our 

 federal Legislatures. 



In 186 1, the farmers of Nova Scotia composed 61 per 

 cent, of the industrial population of the province ; in 

 1881, 43 per cent. This constant relative decline in the 

 numbers of the agricultural class, as compared with 

 others, shows most plainly that however prone the 

 farmer may be at the present to throw away his chances, 

 the time is not far distant when the power which he 

 might exercise to-day will be gone, perhaps never to 

 return. 



