CONSTITUTION OF FARMING. Ill 



hectare, was reckoned the capital necessary for a good 

 farmer. Many, doubtless, had not so much, but others 

 again had more. All make advances to the land with 

 implicit confidence. In that country, where manufactures 

 and commerce offer such inducements for the employ- 

 ment of capital, many people prefer to embark their 

 money in agriculture. While our farmers are sparing to 

 the last degree, considering that what is saved is gain, in 

 England they try who can put most money into the land. 

 This confidence belongs in some measure to large farming. 

 Large farming has especially been the originating cause 

 of large outlay; it is large farming, too, which every 

 day gives the most striking examples of enterprise as ap- 

 plied to the working of the soil ; but middling and small 

 farming follow closely upon large. The small farmer, 

 who has only a few hundred pounds of patrimony, does 

 not hesitate to embark it any more than the great capi- 

 talist, who has ten times or a hundred times as much. 

 Both launch out together, and generally upon the faith of 

 an ordinary annual lease, expending sums which would 

 seem enormous with us, and which proprietors alone 

 would here undertake. When long leases are required, 

 it is in order that a man may more securely make those 

 advances which the land is constantly demanding. 



To large farming is generally attributed the substitu- 

 tion of horses for oxen and machinery for out-door 

 manual labour. The same is said of large outlays for 

 manures and fertilisers, the expense of making and main- 

 taining roads and fences, levelling, subsoil ploughing, 

 draining, irrigation, &c. But this again is quite a mis- 

 take. Improvements that is to say, the useful employ- 

 ment of capital are a sign of rich and intelligent, rather 

 than of large farming. Small and middling farmers un- 

 derstand the benefit of these quite as well as the great, 



