MARKETS. 



more in the manufacturing than in other districts. This 

 is quite a mistake. It is shown, from a table published 

 by Mr Caird in his excellent letters upon English agri- 

 culture, that in the West Hiding, Lancashire, Cheshire, 

 Stafford, and Warwick, the poor's -rate is about Is. in 

 the pound, to 3s. or 4s. a-head, and the number of poor 

 three to four per cent of the population ; whilst in the 

 agricultural counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Bucks, Bedford, 

 Berks, Sussex, Hants, Wilts, Dorset, &c., it exceeds 2s. in 

 the pound, or 10s. a-head, and the number of paupers is 

 thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, and even sixteen per cent of the 

 population. The cause of this difference is easily under- 

 stood ; the number of paupers and the cost of their main- 

 tenance increases as the rate of wages becomes lower. 

 Although the working population be three or four times 

 more dense in the manufacturing than in other parts of 

 the country, its condition there is better, because it pro- 

 duces more. 



What has hitherto appeared to us as a series of pro- 

 blems, is now, if I mistake not, found to be perfectly 

 explained. 



In the first place, as to the organisation of farming. 

 What characterises English rural economy, is, we know, 

 not so much large farming properly so called, as the rais- 

 ing of farming into a business of itself, and the amount 

 of capital at the disposal of professional farmers. These 

 two features are both due to the immense opening found 

 in the non-agricultural population. 



If we transport ourselves to France, to the most back- 

 ward departments of the centre and south, where the 

 metayer system predominates, what do we there find ? 

 A thinly-scattered population, at the most not exceeding 

 on an average one-third that of the English one head 

 only, in place of three, to five acres and that population 



