Draining. 
401 
provements  that  our  dependence,  I firmly  believe,  must  be  now- 
placed.  Not  only  too  have  we  these  varied  means,  but  most  of 
them  are  very  cheap  means.  They  would  average  three  or  four 
pounds  an  acre,  and  the  crops  are  increased  by  them,  be  it 
remembered,  without  increase  of  the  tenant’s  outlay.  I know 
no  other  safe  investment  in  which  moderate  expense  produces 
so  large  a result  of  profit  as  in  many  of  these  permanent  im- 
provements of  land.  At  the  present  time,  however,  the  landlord’s 
anxiety  is  to  avoid  permanent  loss  of  income.  He  should,  there- 
fore, raise  the  productive  power  of  each  farm,  and  there  are  very 
few  farms  on  which  the  owner,  consulting  with  the  tenant,  may 
not  find  some  effective  and  cheap  improvement  to  make.  We 
may  begin  with 
§ 1 . Draining. 
No  one  now  doubts  the  advantage  of  draining;  but  sometimes, 
unfortunately,  the  doubt  exists  whether  it  can  be  done — that  is, 
whether  you  have  an  outfall.  In  Ireland  this  matter  has  been 
attended  to  by  the  Board  of  Works,  and  the  rivers  or  brooks  have 
been  deepened  in  order  to  secure  outfalls  to  each  property.  It 
is  called  there  arterial  drainage — an  absurd  name,  importing  the 
reverse  of  its  object,  since  arteries  convey  their  fluid  into  small 
channels,  whereas  these  main  cuts  carry  theirs  off.  Trunk  drain- 
age it  should  be  called.  In  England  vast  operations  of  this  kind 
have  been  effected  by  private  enterprise,  especially  in  the  Great 
Level  of  the  Fens,  where  600,000  acres,*  some  of  them  below 
high-water  mark,  have  been  drained  by  cuts  and  windmills,  and 
steam-engines,  and  now  are  in  a fair  way  to  gain  a natural  outfall. 
But  no  one  can  have  looked  from  a railway  (railways  generally 
following  the  lowest  level)  without  observing  many  flat  tracts 
where  the  water  fills  the  ditches  to  the  brink  during  the  three 
winter  months.  The  fenmen  have  just  paid  150,000/.  for  an 
additional  fall  of  11  feet  in  30  miles,  and  have  agreed  to  contri- 
bute 60,000/.  more  towards  the  new  works  in  the  Wash,  merely 
for  the  benefit  which  will  arise  to  their  drainage.  Elsewhere  the 
same  fall  might  be  gained  in  three  miles  for  150/.,  and  for  want 
of  it  the  fields  cannot  be  underdrained. 
What  is  most  difficult  is  thus  often  done  first,  because  a less 
amount  of  evil  is  not  enough  to  overcome  a far  smaller  obstacle, 
and  so,  as  in  this  last  common  case,  the  supineness  of  all,  or  obsti- 
nacy of  one,  prevents  all  improvement.  An  Act  was  carried  by 
Lord  Lincoln  enabling  the  majority  of  a district  to  overcome 
such  resistance.  I mention  the  fact  because  its  existence  is  scarcely 
* For  a full  account  of  these  vast  operations,  see  Mr.  Clarke's  Prize  Report,  Journal, 
vii,  80. 
