On Breaking-iip Doicn Land. 
83 
advantapfc : most of his necessary wants are dearer, land is gene- 
rally let to him at a higher rate than to the farmer, his house 
often comfortless and confined, even to indecency, his wages 
barely sufficient to provide his family with food. 
The poor labourers by whom I am now surrounded on Salis- 
bury Plain consume very much more flour than my late labourers 
at Saxby, near Barton-on-Humber, Lincolnshire, because the 
latter were able to purchase a larger quantity of animal food. 
1 pound of meat and 2 pounds of potatoes constitute a desirable 
substitute for 3 pounds of bread, and ought to be the daily por- 
tion, in addition to flour, of every hard-working man. 
The alternate system makes these comforts attainable. The 
successive corn-growing plan on poor soils, as practised in so great 
a portion of the kingdom, invariably reduces the rate of wages 
below what it ought to be, when compared with the price of food. 
There need surely be no reason why the labourer in the south 
may not be as comfortable as his fellow-labourer in the north. 
The fact that he is not so is beyond controversy ; and the very 
opposite systems of the two divisions of the kingdom will account 
for the difference, so striking, in their condition. The generally 
adopted system of farming light soils in the best-cultivated dis- 
tricts is the following : — turnips or rape ; barley or oats ; grass- 
seeds fed green two years : afterwards wheat. Some years ago, 
many were of opinion that the four-course shift was preferable to 
the five ; but time has fully proved the many disadvantages of the 
former system. 
Many are the sorts of grass that may be sown with advantage: 
white clover stands highest in estimation, but care must be taken 
that the land is not exhausted by any one sort of seed. Two- 
fifths of the farm fed green will keep sufficient stock to ensure a 
good crop of wheat. A well- managed turnip crop will secure a 
high state of cultivation during the course of five years. The 
land will keep improving ; and from the whole a reasonable pro- 
fit may be expected. 
It is the want of sufficient moisture, in many parts of the king- 
dom, that causes the crop of turnips to be more uncertain than in 
those districts where the atmosphere is more humid, a disadvan- 
tage which the decayed turf of the seeds tends greatly to remove. 
Experience, in different counties, has convinced me (and the wise 
measures of the Royal Agricultural Society to concentrate know- 
ledge will doubtless confirm the fact) that as any light dry district 
is farmed on the alternate system, or on that of successive corn- 
crops, the country is prosperous or the reverse, wages high or low: 
this, I think, is indisputable. In those counties where corn is 
grown after corn on light poor soils, the common price for mowing, 
getting together, and raking an acre of barley or oats, is only 
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