588 
Agricultural Statistics. 
arrived at, and some injustice done thereby to the common sense 
of the English agricultural community, by the committal of a new 
and important experiment to a test peculiarly liable to miscon- 
struction, compared with the means employed elsewhere, and 
thus furnishing, in fact, no intrinsic proof of failure or success. 
It will hardly be denied by any one that the true practical 
question we have to consider, is not what can or cannot be 
done by Boards of Guardians, or any other branch of Poor Law 
machinery, but what is the best mode of collecting agricultural 
statistics ? A very short experience has been sufficient to make 
it clear that, for the present, at any rate, the idea of one uniform 
system throughout the United Kingdom, which would a priori 
have naturally suggested itself, cannot be entertained. Two 
<lifferent systems have already grown to maturity, varying with 
the different circumstances of two portions of the United King- 
dom : in Ireland, the constabulary ; in Scotland, the purely 
agricultural, — singularly dissimilar, one scarcely likes to say cha- 
racteristic, media of procedure for the carrying out of a requisi- 
tion so simple and elementary, and wliicli, in its ultimate impact 
upon the soil and its occupier, must in one sense be identical 
everywhere. But upon the principle that a people is governed 
best when governed most according to its genius, it is, doubt- 
less, to be concluded that, as far as Ireland and Scotland are 
concerned, the present system will remain. That commenced 
in England and Wales, with a result much less decided, we 
cannot but regard (though with the most unfeigned respect 
for the ' Resolutions ' of the Lords' Committee, before which 
this inquiry was so admirably carried out) fas open to recon- 
sideration. The Poor Law Inspectors engaged in the task, whose 
experience and resulting opinion on tliis point are now un- 
doubtedly entitled to weight, and yield to none in respect of tlie 
personal and experimental insight they obtained, are at issue 
even on the main question of the employment of the Poor Law 
machinery at all. Three only out of those chivalrous pioneers 
of this branch of agricultural civilisation, who went forth to 
make experiment of the Poor Law machinery, as suggested not 
h/ but to Sir John Walsham, though afterwards matured by him, 
viz., Mr. Hawley (Hampshire and Wiltshire), Mr. Manwaring, 
and Mr. Farnall (the West Riding), expi-ess any approval of the 
plan. Of these, the first, Mr. Hawley, though asserting his own 
adhesion to it, quotes letter after letter, in his Report, from 
gentlemen of influence among the Union authorities of the dis- 
trict, condemning the medium while approving the object, both 
in strong terms. Mr. Manwaring's opinion it is extremely 
difficult, though in a very short Report, to gather with exactness. 
He speaks of the " practicability, if not the ease, of agricultural 
