704 Cultivation of Waste Lands. 



glut of unemployed population, which it is unquestionably the duty of the 

 "■overnment to attend to in some way or other. There is abundance of em- 

 ployment for this popuhition, in the high garden cultivation of lands now 

 under the plough; in the cultivation of waste lands; and in the execution 

 of great national works, roads, canals, drainages, &c. But what would be 

 the consequence of such a general stimulus to production ? Unless the 

 children of the people so employed were highly educated, so as to produce 

 voluntary emigration among them whenever it became necessary, the evil 

 would in a very few years be greatly increased. We confess, however, that 

 we should wish to see the superfluous population so employed, and their 

 children so educated, rather than that they should be compelled to emigrate. 

 With the high degree of education to their offspring of which we have 

 criven an outhne, we would take our chance of the results; and more espe- 

 cially as before any great addition could be made to the population, a reduc- 

 tion of the national debt, free trade in every thing and especially in corn, 

 free and greatly facilitated intercourse with every other country, an increased 

 population in these countries, and in consequence an increasing demand for 

 our manufactures, must have taken place. 



Art. XI. Cultivation of Waste Lands. 



In The News, one of the most spirited of the London Sunday newspapers, 

 the leading article for October 4. argues the advantage that would result 

 from a general enclosure act, and selling on long credit, or letting at very 

 low rents, the enclosed land, in moderate portions, to the superfluous popu- 

 lation. It seems there are upwards of 8 millions of acres of waste lands in 

 the Scotch and English counties ; or more probably, according to the writer, 

 10 millions of acres, and 4 millions in Ireland. Yorkshire alone contains 

 600,000 waste acres, and 100,000 unemployed and half-starved artisans 

 and labourers. 



To encourage the cultivation of these lands, for which there is, without 

 doubt, abundance of capital in England, the writer proposes that all the 

 lands so brought into cultivation, with the erections on them, and the 

 materials used in forming these erections, should be left untaxed and 

 untithed for 20 years. Unquestionably this degree of encouragement would 

 soon effect the culture of the lands, and as the writer is aware, it would 

 also reduce the rental of lands in cultivation at least one half. This he 

 says, and we entirely agree with him, " would be a great good in itself: as, in 

 the lowering of prices, it would advance the 'pecuniary capacity of the 

 country to increase its consumption of agricultural produce (an inadequate 

 proportion of which promotes disease and imbecility), and of our home manu- 

 factures ; while it only took away from the rich the glitter and gewgaw of 

 high life, now become so excessively artificial as to cease in its resemblance 

 to any thing originally and substantially English. It is their excessive 

 wealth which has created that eternal craving for foreign indulgences in our 

 aristocracy, and which leads them to reside abroad, more than the desire of 

 knowledge and the study of European life, which were the original induce- 

 ments to travel. The rentals of land must come down : if they do not fall 

 from one cause, they will soon tumble from another. The unnational and 

 antisocial plan of emigration, encouraged by the great landowners, will 

 never meet the difficulty they seek to remove, viz. the growing pauperism 

 of the country : for, as far as it now operates, it is injurious rather than 

 beneficial, inducing the removal of industry and capital, more than of 

 poverty and idleness ; it is even taking away from the countr}', to the direct 

 injury of the landowner himself, the marketable demand for farms." 



