156 RURAL ECONOMY OF ENGLAND. 



farmer has to sell, but they bring him in the same way 

 what he requires among other things, manures and 

 improvers, such as guano, bones, rags, lime, gypsum, 

 soot, oil-cake, &c., all heavy and bulky articles, which 

 could not easily be conveyed otherwise, and the abun- 

 dance of which supposes a very active industrial de- 

 velopment. Among these are also iron and coal, which 

 are every day more and more used in agriculture, and 

 which, to a certain extent, represent industry itself. 

 Something more productive still than coal, iron, and 

 animal and mineral substances, namely, the spirit of specu- 

 lation, travels along with them from the manufacturing 

 centres, where it rises, to the fields, where it finds fresh 

 elements to work upon, and brings with it capital : a 

 fruitful interchange, which enriches manufactures by 

 agriculture, and agriculture by manufactures. 



Notwithstanding the great facility of transport by 

 steamers and railroads, a sensible difference exists in the 

 gross and net agricultural produce between counties 

 which are exclusively agricultural and those which are 

 at the same time manufacturing. 



The manufacturing districts par excellence, commenc- 

 ing with Warwickshire in the south, and ending with the 

 West Riding of Yorkshire, are those in which rents, 

 profits, and agricultural wages rise highest. There the 

 average rent is 30s. per acre, and a country labourer's 

 wages 12s. a- week; whilst in the district exclusively 

 agricultural lying to the south of London, the average 

 rent is not more than 20s. per acre, and wages 8s. a- week. 

 The intermediate counties approach more or less to these 

 two extremes, according as they are more or less manu- 

 facturing, and everywhere the rate of land and wages is 

 a sure criterion of the development of local industry. 



It is pretty generally believed that pauperism prevails 



