THE BATTLE OF THE PLOUGHSHARES. 
 
 PRICE, PROFIT, AND RENT: 
 
 THEIR MUTUAL RELATION IN THE 
 
 PROSPECTS OE BRITISH AGRICULTURE. 
 
 A LANDOWNER AND A FARMER. 
 
 “' The purpose you undertake is dangerous: too great for the counterpoise of so 
 great an opposition.’ ‘ Say you so ! But I tell you, my Lord Fool, that out of this 
 nettle Danger we pluck this flower Safety!’ ” Hen. 1V», Pt. 1, Act II. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 JOHN OLLIVIER, 5D PALL MALL. 
 
 1846. 
 
\E v ^(dc 
 
PRICE, PROFIT, AND RENT. 
 
 There is an old saying, “ Man’s necessity is God’s 
 opportunity,” the meaning of which, interpreted 
 in accordance with Natural Laws, appears to be, 
 that when a man has done kicking and strug¬ 
 gling and doing his utmost to drown himself in 
 the waters of affliction, the very exhaustion of 
 his own suicidal efforts is often found to save him 
 from the catastrophe which his previous conduct 
 was surely hastening: as we used sometimes to 
 hear it said, when people were in the habit of 
 riding on Stage-coaches, that if death or danger 
 stare you in the face outside a boat that has been 
 capsized, or a coach that is going to be, the safest 
 thing to do is to do nothing but ‘ keep quiet and stick 
 to the Vehicle.’ 
 
 Indeed this steady and self-commending advice 
 of the ‘ Brighton Coachman,’ appears far from in¬ 
 apposite to the present critical-seeming juncture for 
 that large and respectable part of the community 
 who put themselves down as ‘connected w'ith 
 Agriculture.’ The utter and sudden abandonment 
 B 
 
of a system of financial policy which has been in 
 undisturbed, though varied, operation and respect, 
 for the last thirty years, and though originating in 
 the uninspired wisdom of George Canning and 
 Charles Grant, has been guarded and enshrined 
 rather with the religious jealousy due to some 
 sacred Relic, than as a fabric bearing the infirm 
 stamp of human ingenuity—the explosion, I say, 
 of this bubble, after the pertinacious blowing of 
 so many mouths, for so many years, may well 
 cause a little consternation in the minds of men; 
 whether, (according to their tone of intellect,) from 
 astonishment that it should ever have evaporated, 
 or that it should ever have endured so long. 
 
 I remember being taken, in the Island of Ma¬ 
 deira, to see a Cliff which rises in perpendicular 
 escarpment to the stupendous height of two thou¬ 
 sand feet out of the sea, and presents as clean a 
 section from top to bottom as if it had been sliced 
 by a guillotine, shewing such regular horizontal 
 bands of geological strata, that one could almost 
 fancy it a suggestion of * Nature’s own’ for the pat¬ 
 tern of a waistcoat: about midway up there was a 
 little shred of a thing like a bit of white chip 
 clinging to the naked rock, as if it did not exactly 
 belong to it, or know what business it had there, 
 but was afraid to let go, from such a desperate 
 height, with the Atlantic boiling in the hideous 
 chasm below. On enquiry I was told that it was 
 the solitary remnant and sad record of a human 
 attempt to quarry a beautiful vein of red granite 
 
that ran along the middle of the cliff, by means of 
 a long series of scaling-ladders pinned to the face of 
 the rock by iron staples from the sea-line upwards: 
 but that after quarrying successfully a sufficient 
 quantity to build half a church, one disastrous blast 
 prematurely ignited, sent a hundred and fifty pious 
 Catholics and all their ladders, save this one, on 
 such a downward errand, that they had time to 
 count their beads to every Saint, and prepare them¬ 
 selves for Heaven, before they touched the Earth, or 
 rather in their case, the Waters under it. I know 
 not by what queer and involuntary analogy of 
 thought it is that since the threatened demolition 
 of the Sliding-scale, that blessed invention of man to 
 save Providence the trouble of regulating the supply 
 and price of corn to Englishmen, my mind’s eye, 
 wearied of wandering over the promised waste of 
 plough-deserted acres and a bisected Rental, has 
 glanced back with strange pertinacity to that sub¬ 
 lime but ill-fated Rock, and has confused, dream¬ 
 like, the shred of ‘Protection’ that the Session of 
 1846 will leave behind it, with that remnant of a 
 goodly line of scaling-ladders hanging’, like an epi¬ 
 taph, upon the marble face of Cabo Girao: or why 
 the question, after the lapse of many years, should 
 occur again to my mind, that I put to my com¬ 
 panion, a clever Portuguese, (now a leading mem¬ 
 ber of the Cortes) “Why they didn’t commence 
 operations from the top, which was readily attainable 
 on the land side, and where the ladders could be 
 well secured, and let down the stone by pullies l He 
 
4 
 
 looked brightly at me for a moment, and then with 
 a clouded face, and replying in French, for reasons 
 that were standing around us, said, “ Dieu ! Je ne 
 sais pas, k moins que de faire rien que de travers, 
 comme nous,” ‘ God knows ! but the Portuguese 
 begin everything at the wrong end !' 
 
 This was indeed, as Mark Tapley says, “ dreadful 
 truebut I hope to shew in the course of a few 
 pages, that there are still besides the Portu¬ 
 guese some other Nations upon earth, too dan¬ 
 gerous to name, who do sometimes make mistakes 
 not unanalogous with the sliding-scale—I beg 
 pardon, the climbing-scale I mean—of these poor 
 masons. 
 
 For thirty years We too have been climbing and 
 ‘ scaling’ after a hopeless quarry. Ignorant of the 
 fact that Price is a Result and not a Cause, we 
 have been making laws to keep up—or if you please, 
 to keep steady—the price of the greatest and most 
 important article of commerce in the world, from 
 the ludicrous idea that by raising the price we could 
 raise the profit! just as a child sticks a full-blown 
 flower into its garden by the stalk, expecting it to 
 grow, unaware that its beauty and fragrance are the 
 effect of a mysterious but natural and wholesome 
 process of vegetable action, and that if he wants the 
 pretty flower he must plant the ugly root. 
 
 Prfft, which is the object of all trade, has no 
 permanent dependence on the price of the article : it 
 has not even a direct relation with it: for the profit 
 will sometimes be as great, or even greater, when the 
 
5 
 
 price is lowered, in consequence either of some new 
 invention, or better economy of production, or the 
 successful application of capital on a larger scale, 
 either of which three causes will enable the producer 
 to sell the article at a lower price, and yet obtain 
 more profit. This is a matter of daily instance, be¬ 
 fore our very eyes, in every trade: and was never bet¬ 
 ter shewn than it now is in Agriculture. If I drain 
 a field which used to yield me twenty bushels to the 
 acre, and by an outlay of five pounds to the acre 
 (the ordinary cost of drainage) make it yield me 
 thirty, (by no means an uncommon increase) with 
 the same quantity of seed manure and labour; it is 
 a mere matter of calculation to see that I can afford 
 to sell that corn much cheaper than before, (after 
 deducting the interest of my expended capital), and 
 yet realize a far greater profit; and what is more, 
 could afford to pay a better rent. This may be such 
 a startling paradox to those who have never much 
 considered the subject before, that I must beg leave 
 to be a little tiresome and technical, by explaining 
 in detail the evidence of the fact that neither the 
 Farmer s Profit nor the Landlord's Rent, depends 
 upon the Price op Corn. 
 
 I will first take the Evidence of Drainage, per¬ 
 haps in our wet climate the most extensive and 
 important of all, as the foundation of increased pro¬ 
 duce on a limited space. I have drained many 
 fields, at an expense of between four and five pounds 
 an acre, which previously denied nearly one third 
 of their surface to the purposes of vegetation, through 
 
6 
 
 the following cause. On land that has a clay sub¬ 
 soil, it is an old practice extending over the greater 
 part of England to elevate the soil by repeated 
 ploughings, into ridges from five to ten yards wide. 
 Six yards is a common width. The object is, to 
 keep the ridges comparatively dry by making the 
 Furrows that divide them, channels for the escape 
 of the surface water, which trickling as from a low- 
 pitched roof of a house, keeps that portion of the 
 ridge which is near the Furrow in a state of perpe¬ 
 tual saturation, increasing with the proximity to 
 the channel of escape. The consequence is, that in 
 many cases, for a yard’s width next to the furrow, 
 the seed either never germinates, or forms no head, 
 or produces such a quality of grain as spoils the 
 sample. In short, a yard on each side of every 
 ridge is like waste ground at harvest-time, after 
 receiving the same quantity of seed and labour as 
 the rest, at sowing time: consequently two yards 
 out of every six (i.e. one third of the whole field) 
 are more or less unproductive, but as costly as the 
 rest, and therefore a virtual drawback upon the 
 profit of the two thirds that remain productive. I 
 might show, for reasons too lengthy to enter upon 
 except in an agricultural treatise, that even that 
 grain which grows upon the drier part of the ridge 
 is not of such quality or in such quantity as if the 
 land had an even surface, as Nature intended. An 
 application of capital to the extent of £5. an acre, 
 in under-drainage, cures this evil, in point of fact, 
 by laying the furrow under ground: from this 
 
time the land can be laid level, the tillage of it be¬ 
 comes much lighter and more effective, can be con¬ 
 tinued in the winter as well as summer, two horses 
 can do what four did before; less manure, less seed, 
 and less labour will produce greater crops of better 
 quality, the turnip-crop can take the place of the 
 bare summer-fallow,* and consequently more food 
 for winter-stock is produced, and therefore more 
 manure for future crops ; and what with the re¬ 
 deemed space, improved mechanical texture and 
 chemical disposition of the soil, it is no uncommon 
 result for the succeeding wheat crop to be nearly 
 doubled in quantity. Supposing the general cor¬ 
 rectness of this description of drainage and its ef¬ 
 fects, which I do not think any farmer of a wet 
 clay soil will dispute, can it be questioned that the 
 produce of a field so improved, after paying the in¬ 
 terest of the outlay, would leave the cultivator a 
 greater profit, though sold at a great reduction of 
 price ? To every agricultural improvement the 
 same reasoning applies. Every improved imple¬ 
 ment, every new and cheaper or more effective 
 manure, every new description of seed of more pro¬ 
 lific qualities, every improved rotation-of-crops, 
 every improvement to the texture or fertility of the 
 soil; every ceconomy in the home-operations of the 
 Farmery, by steam-power, compendious machinery, 
 increased support for winter-stock, healthier modes 
 of rearing and quicker modes of fattening—in a 
 
 * The expense of which alone, including the year’s Rent, is 
 estimated by farmers at £5. an acre. 
 
8 
 
 word, every advancement of the power of mind over 
 matter, by the aids of science and of skill in its ap¬ 
 plication —tends to one common and providential 
 end, increase of produce, and at the same time (Eco¬ 
 nomy of production; the elements at once of abun¬ 
 dance and cheapness to the consumer, and of profit 
 to the producer : and the greater the profit to the 
 producer, the more the land becomes worth to hire, 
 the larger therefore becomes the Rent per acre to 
 the Landlord, as every acre becomes more produc¬ 
 tive to the Tenant ; and this in the very face of those 
 causes which are thus, under the wisdom and be¬ 
 neficence of God, ever tending to make the produce 
 cheaper. But mark ! the rapid increase of popu¬ 
 lation,^ a flourishing country,—and there are nearly 
 a thousand additional mouths to feed every time the 
 sun rises upon our own,—is constantly pressing 
 upon this increasing supply, and keeping up the 
 price that capital, science, and skill are ever tending 
 to lower. Price therefore is merely a result! It 
 is the effect of a constantly progressive demand 
 pressing upon a constantly increasing supply. 
 
 What then becomes of the childish policy that 
 mistaking high prices for the cause of high profits, 
 instead of seeing in them the result of an increasing 
 demand, would madly diminish that demand by at¬ 
 tempting to enhance artificially the price of the arti¬ 
 cle ? The less capital and science are applied to 
 Agriculture, the higher prices will remain and the 
 more restricted the demand. Let capital and science 
 have their full operation, and you will have higher 
 
profits and larger rents, though with a lower price of 
 corn. In fact the price of corn and the value of land, 
 have a constant inverse tendency with respect to each 
 other: the former getting cheaper asmore can be grown 
 on an acre, and the acre becoming more valuable 
 as it becomesable to produce a greater crop. Increase 
 your consumption by Trade and Commerce, and 
 all those great national works that occasion employ¬ 
 ment and support population, and then you will keep 
 up the price of corn as the effect of an increasing 
 demand: but do not mistake the flower for the root, 
 and imagine that by making in the first instance an 
 artificial price of corn, you will improve the business 
 of the faymer, or the resulting rent to the landowner. 
 
 One should suppose that the simple and eternal 
 truth of such a principle as this was trite and visible, 
 usque ad nauseam. In point of practice it is la¬ 
 mentably the reverse : but it is only one out of 
 many instances moral and social as well as political, 
 in which like the hasty child, mistaking effects for 
 causes, we plant the gaudy flower instead of the 
 flower-producing root, thinking in our greedy ig¬ 
 norance to substitute a more compendious human 
 process for Nature’s sure and fertile operations. But 
 there is an universal analogy belonging to Truth. 
 It is as sure in Politics as in Morals, that selfishness 
 recoils upon itself. “ More haste worse speed ” 
 might be written as the Commentary upon the 
 whole history of those laws which, whether in 
 * Manufactures or Agriculture ’ (as if Agriculture 
 were not a manufacture!) have been framed in sui- 
 
10 
 
 ciclal ignorance to enthrone High Price as the cause, 
 instead of waiting for it as the effect, of Prosperity. 
 
 But this wearisome discussion is now likely to be 
 set at rest for ever. The question for Agriculturists 
 is no longer whether a ‘ protected ’ price be a bless¬ 
 ing or a curse—whether human or divine laws are 
 the surest agents of prosperity,—whether restricted 
 or extended commerce be the bestfield for productive 
 labour —'whether the area of the British Isles or of 
 the whole world be the best insurance-office for per¬ 
 manent steadiness of value, statistical equality of 
 annual supply, and steady progression of demand, 
 —whether it be the interest and duty of the 
 wealthiest, the most industrial, most naval and com¬ 
 mercial empire on the globe to set the example of 
 closed or open ports,—these questions are consigned 
 to the tomb of all the Capulets. The true question 
 that remains to every rational and practical mind, 
 that has the wisdom to look for the best of all pro¬ 
 phecy in the history of the Past—is this, What 
 are now the prospects of British Agriculture ? 
 
 Isnot Great Britain the first commercial kingdom 
 upon earth, and Agriculture the first—the most es¬ 
 sential—the greatest of all commerce. Its subject 
 is the foremost of all human wants. “ Give us this 
 day our daily bread !” Its object is the supply of 
 that which we are instructed even by Divine Com¬ 
 mand to pray for as our first, and fundamental phy¬ 
 sical necessity, as coming in the divine order of 
 Nature before everything else! The ‘ Intellectual ’ 
 cannot devise, the ‘ Moral ’ cannot practise, till the 
 
11 
 
 1 Physical ’ be supplied. Let the Merchant, or the 
 Capitalist, the lord of Mills or Mines, or the Rail¬ 
 road King, count with what pride he may the thou¬ 
 sands that he employs and feeds, or the Millions 
 that he owns, the profession of the humblest farmer 
 comes in the truthful and everlasting order of 
 Nature before his own. He may smile in his ephe¬ 
 meral elevation, at this Eternal Precedency; but 
 he pays to it the best of all Tribute, the sincerest 
 of all deference, in the daily fact that he cannot 
 exist without it. Is it then a question of small 
 moment to ask, What are now the prospects of 
 such an interest as that of the British Agricul¬ 
 turist ? 
 
 For thirty years we have been under a great 
 mistake. Let it be granted ! To err is human : 
 and it is through the preference and reliance upon 
 human wisdom that we have erred. To go further 
 back is to go back to a period of War, when the 
 “times are out of joint.” It is only during peace 
 that political and social causes produce their natural 
 effects undisturbed. Let us retrace that portion of 
 our history that is really available for effective re¬ 
 trospect. During that period we have seen Agri¬ 
 culture the victim of every wind that blew, an 
 uncertain Business, a gambling Trade, and therefore 
 an insecure investment for Capital on a large scale. 
 If harvests were good, the farmer was ruined by a 
 home-glut: if bad, the commerce of the nation was 
 paralyzed by the withdrawal of its circulating me¬ 
 dium in a golden effort to reap where we had not 
 
12 
 
 sown—to bring to life, impromptu, a foreign trade 
 that we had legislated to smother. When we had 
 a surplus, we could not sell out of doors, because 
 we had barricaded our doors and windows, and 
 raised an artificial atmosphere, whose lowest point 
 seemed Fever-heat compared with the healthy 
 temperature around us, which our timid blood 
 shrunk from the encounterof, though protected as we 
 were by our natural clothing. We forgot, or never 
 knew, that the healthier warmth, the more genial 
 glow was to be won by bold exertion in that free air 
 that we dreaded, and under that universal sunshine 
 that we had been shutting out. Weak and few as 
 we thought ourselves, we failed to notice that every 
 loaf that our formidable besiegers threw us from 
 without, caused more famine to them than plenty to 
 us. We resisted the irresistible conclusion that we 
 might have derived from this single fact. When 
 every Port in Europe was powerfully acted upon by 
 our lightest demand, when the price-current of the 
 granaries of Dantzic, Hamburgh, Konigsburg, 
 Stettin, in the North, and Odessa in the South, sunk 
 and rose with the most pulse-like responsiveness to 
 every fickle throb from the Heart and Centre of the 
 demand and supply of the world, we still shut our 
 eyes to the self-evident conclusion that those whom 
 we had such enormous power to influence must 
 have little power to act upon us, and that for every 
 shilling they could pull down our ‘Prices,’ the 
 effort must raise their own in a five-fold ratio. We 
 did not believe this. No, no ! our mistrustful eye, 
 
13 
 
 cunning but not wise, wandered in morbid imagi¬ 
 nation over the unsolicited fecundity of the banks 
 of the Vistula, and pictured to our pockets a Con¬ 
 spiracy of Nations to burst our granaries with corn 
 grown without labour on fields cultivated without 
 cost! Such was our belief; and some of us (God 
 save the mark !) believe it still : and knit the 
 thoughtful brow, and shake the sapient head, at the 
 solemn prospect of a Russian invasion of serf- 
 threshed corn, more poisonous than slave-grown 
 sugar! “ Daring Pen !” I hear them mutter, “ that 
 after the agricultural experience of years, that 
 should have taught you the discretional part of 
 valour, venture to stick your Rick-ribbon on a 
 May-pole, and shout your solitary and feeble defi¬ 
 ance to the frightful rivalry of the Transylvanian 
 Plough! do you not know that the poorest country 
 can always grow corn the cheapest ?” 
 
 “ No, i’faith! I lack some of thy instinct!” It 
 has always appeared to me, on the contrary, that in 
 every competition of trade the weakest go to 
 the wall! that Capital and Industry and Skill, tax 
 and torture them how you may, can undersell po¬ 
 verty, and idleness, and ignorance. I was'brought up 
 in the orthodox creed that ‘one Englishman can beat 
 three Frenchmen,’ to say nothing of Russians”and 
 Bohemians : and as S words are out of fashion now, 
 of course I ‘turn it on’ to Ploughshares; for it would 
 be a pity not to realize upon something so pleasant 
 an abstraction. So if you want to know the whole 
 English of my opinion, I’ll tell you what it is. That 
 
14 
 
 in a very few years from “ this ignorant present 
 time,” England will be the Corn-mart, as she is 
 already the Money-mart, of the world. For what 
 is money but the representative of corn, the first and 
 ehiefest thing that man must exchange it for ; and 
 in which, try what else he may, he is bound by the 
 Law of Nature, to measure its ultimate and effective 
 value. And what have we been doing for thirty 
 years ? trying to invert the natural order of things, 
 and make money the governor of corn instead of 
 corn the governor of money. And what has been 
 the success of our attempt ? to dislocate every joint 
 and knuckle of our corn and money-market too, and 
 subject ourselves to reiterating and ruinous alterna¬ 
 tions in each, producing disastrous variations of cent, 
 per cent, in their struggle, against the blind perver¬ 
 sity of man, to recover their relative and respective 
 value; involving themselves and each other in an 
 enforced perplexity and mystery of cross-relation 
 which not even the twin-arrogance of ‘ Gemini,’ 
 the Castor and Pollux of the Brummagem Philo¬ 
 sophy, with their sharp eyes for a Mare’s-nest, 
 could disentangle, to their own, much less the 
 world’s, intelligence. 
 
 What then will be the first effect of our abandon¬ 
 ment of this contracted policy, by the announcement 
 to the world that we have shaken off the nightmare of 
 ignorant apprehension, this visionary bird of Panic, 
 that has brooded so long over the waving Corn¬ 
 fields of England ;—that, taxed as we are, we are 
 ready to meet them in a ‘ fair field and no favor,’ 
 
15 
 
 and to beat them in Agriculture as, in spite of these 
 same taxes, we have beaten them in everything 
 else? ‘When the lion wakes, the forest trembles.’ 
 The quotations of prices-current will instantly rise 
 at every Corn-port in Europe, never to sink again 
 as the closed warehouses of England have made 
 them sink before.—But this will make their prices 
 higher? To be sure it will! it will make the price, 
 of everything higher abroad, and so compel ‘ the 
 foreigner ’ (hateful word ! as if the interest of all 
 nations was not identical, if they only knew it!) to 
 meet us in the great struggle of Capital applied to 
 every art and every business that produce the 
 necessaries, the comforts, or the luxuries of human 
 life. True, so long as we remain an importing 
 nation, our corn-prices will ever remain higher 
 than those of exporting countries. Our prices will 
 be the prices of the world, plus the expense of 
 shipment, freight, transhipment, harbour-dues, 
 and warehouse-expenses, besides the importer’s 
 profit. But how long will that continue ? Why 
 until our Capital, Science, and Skill, overtaking- 
 even our own immensely advancing population 
 and increasing demand, shall beat ‘ the foreigner ’ 
 on his own ground, as we did at Cressy, Blen¬ 
 heim, and Waterloo, as we have done in Cotton, 
 Silk, and Woollen, and everything else, except Po¬ 
 liteness, which we hope to do. ‘ But to beat them 
 in corn-growing,we must be able to undersell them, 
 and that can only be done by low prices ?' (“Still 
 harping on my daughter!") Why to be sure we 
 
16 
 
 must! But have I not shewn that every applica¬ 
 tion of capital to land tends to this, by increasing 
 the produce, and with it the farmer’s profit and the 
 landlord’s rent? When were the gigantic fortunes 
 made in cotton and our other national trades ? 
 When invention, and ingenuity, and capital had 
 cheapened the article and increased the customers 
 a thousand-fold. For every rich man that has bread 
 enough, there are thousands and tens of thousands 
 of poor ones that have not enough. What is true 
 of bread, was only less urgently true of cotton- 
 stockings: and is true of everything else that hands 
 can produce and money can buy. ‘ But the pro¬ 
 ductive powers of land are limited ?’ Are they so ? 
 Who says so? I have myself raised five-and- 
 thirty bushels to an acre on land that before pro¬ 
 duced but fifteen of inferior quality, by an outlay 
 of £5. to an acre in a permanent improvement: 
 and how many millions of acres are there in Eng¬ 
 land and Wales, Scotland and Ireland, which only 
 want the same expenditure to produce the same 
 results ? But let it not be replied that wet lands 
 alone (though that admission were quite enough) 
 are capable of this increase. Let the Cottagers and 
 Allotment-Tenants of England say whether they 
 have not grown on their quarter-acre, by a greater 
 proportion of manure, and deeper and better culti¬ 
 vation, at the rate of three times per acre the 
 ordinary produce of the neighbourhood. They are 
 in respect of their few square yards of earth, greater 
 Capitalists in labour and manure, than most of us 
 
17 
 
 are who cultivate acres by the hundred or thousand. 
 It is this, and not ‘the spade,’ that makes the 
 difference. And the rents they pay are notoriously 
 high. The limit to the productive capabilities of 
 the soil was never found yet, and never will be. 
 
 “ What, if any,” says one of our agricultural periodicals 
 this year, “ will be the effects of the expected change, not 
 upon class or person, but upon agricultural •practice ? It might 
 seem almost presumptuous to ask or guess, almost idle to 
 dilate upon, had we nothing but surmise or conjecture to 
 proceed upon or offer. But we have more. We have the 
 history of past practice : of the causes, of every description, 
 that have operated to retard or to advance its improvement. 
 And in the review which presents itself, our eye is caught by 
 one or two leading features that have ever and anon solicited 
 our attention and claimed our repeated remark throughout 
 our progress in the journey we have traversed. One is the 
 utterly disproportionate application of capital to agriculture, 
 as compared with all the other great objects of human enter¬ 
 prise, and investments of human labour and invention ; the 
 other is a matter of closer detail, and lying more out of a 
 cursory view, but powerfully significant; it may be comprised 
 in the proposition that the farmer’s attention has been hitherto 
 called rather to the price that he can obtain for a given quantity, 
 than the amount that he can grow upon a given space. We affirm 
 with regret this proposition, and we appeal to our readers if 
 the remark be not true in reference to the past; and if true, 
 whether it do not betoken a screw loose somewhere in the 
 movement of the agricultural machine, interrupting its due 
 and proper action, and distorting it from its due and proper 
 object and purpose as the means of producing an indefinitely 
 increasing supply to a constantly increasing demand. 
 
 “ Observe the effects of the application of capital and inven¬ 
 tion to other arts. They shew themselves in improved ma¬ 
 chinery, greater produce, lower price, and increased profits ! Is 
 C 
 
18 
 
 this true or is it not ? as a practical and striking fact, is it true or 
 is it not, that the fortunes made by cotton-spinning and calico- 
 printing have increased and extended enormously since the 
 improved machinery and (Economised labour have multiplied 
 the produce and reduced the price to an extent astonishing to 
 contemplate ? Is it true or is it not, that the double blessing 
 of lower price to the consumer and greater profit to the pro¬ 
 ducer, have gone hand in hand ? And if it be true, as it is 
 well known to be, that profit does not depend upon price, in 
 regard to that which we “put on;” why should it be other¬ 
 wise in regard to that which we “eat and drink?” Why 
 should that which is an axiom to the one be a paradox to the 
 other? Both are trades in which capital invests itself in 
 human labour, employed through the medium of machinery 
 upon the task of production. Why should a truth which is 
 positive to the Loom be negative to the Plough? The pro¬ 
 ductive capabilities of each are alike unknown, and as far as 
 human knowledge has reached, unlimited ; the latter perhaps 
 more surely than the former. What is the chilling cause that 
 arrests investment in the elder branch of human art,—agri¬ 
 culture,—and sells its birthright to the younger,—manufac¬ 
 tures 1 We pause for a reply, but it is the pause not of fear 
 but of hope; of hope not illuded by future expectations, but 
 founded upon past experience: and truly the experience of 
 the past ten years has been instructive beyond all former re¬ 
 trospect. With a population increasing at the astounding rate 
 of nearly a thousand a day, a thousand mouths to feed each day 
 beyond the number of the day before; with the acreage of our 
 little island cut and sliced, and taken up in every direction by 
 the overbearing Railroad, that swallows two thousand acres to 
 a hundred miles, how have we met the increased and increas¬ 
 ing demand ? By largely increased importation 1 Evidently 
 not. Have our fields then grown larger ? No : but they 
 have produced more. The example of the few, and the en¬ 
 couragement of that example and its results, have not been 
 lost. The movement is but in its infancy, but it bids fair to 
 
19 
 
 attain a stature that shall vindicate its place among the rapid 
 and gigantic growths that modern times have seen in other 
 arts, and exemplify the scientific and (Economic truths that 
 their progress has established.”* 
 
 One little circumstance, in the agricultural his¬ 
 tory of the past year alone, may perhaps he adduced 
 in illustration of the likelihood of this expectation. 
 In this one year the farmers of Great Britain im¬ 
 ported one hundred and thirty-seven thousand three 
 hundred tons of Guano, at an expense of a million 
 and a quarter sterling ! This was of course indepen¬ 
 dent of many other manures annually imported, be¬ 
 sides the usual supplies of our own farm-yards. The 
 peculiar value of this manure (guano) lies in its ex¬ 
 treme portability, and its consequent application to 
 distant fields, or to hill-sides inaccessible to the pon¬ 
 derous dung-cart. It seemed incredible till proved 
 by actual experience, that a sufficient quantity of this 
 inestimable fertilizer could be conveyed in a single 
 wheelbarrow to manure far more effectively a space 
 of land which would have required eight or ten 
 cart-loads of Farm-Yard Manure drawn up hill bv 
 three horses. By its use a single man does in 
 an hour what would otherwise have required three 
 horses and a man a whole day : and besides this 
 saving of labour, the quantity required to manure 
 an acre costs about one-fifth of the supposed expense 
 (for nobody knows it) of that supplied from the 
 yard: and it will be borne in mind that the crops it 
 
 * Agricultural Gazi'tir, .Ian. Hnl, 
 c3 
 
20 
 
 raises, upon the outlying or hilly fields of a Farm, al¬ 
 most out of reach of manure before, are a permanent 
 boon to the future cultivation, by the straw left behind 
 from this extra produce. The importation of this and 
 other manures, is precisely analogous to that of raw 
 cotton or any other produce required and worked 
 up by our manufacturers, by which they have sup¬ 
 plied and undersold with the manfactured article 
 the markets of the very countries from whence it 
 was imported. How is this accomplished? By 
 our superiority in capital, industry, and skill. 
 Does any true friend to Agriculture desire that it 
 alone should remain an exception to our victorious 
 course in every other art ? or prefer to believe that 
 there is any inherent and anomalous peculiarity in 
 the manufacture of Corn that is to make it for ever 
 a contradiction to the principles that apply to them ? 
 Our present agricultural position, our present pro¬ 
 duction, paltry as it is to what it might be, is a 
 practical refutation of the equally unfounded and 
 unpatriotic assumption. Can the Iron-works of 
 Liege or Huys furnish a plough to compete with 
 Howard of Bedford, or Ransome of Ipswich? Do 
 the plains of Hungary or Pultowa crumble to 
 dust under such an Implement as ‘ Crosskill’s Clod- 
 crusher,’ which epitomizes the work of days into 
 half as many hours ? or yield their stubborn virtues 
 to such persuasive arguments as those of the ‘ Uley 
 Cultivator’ or ‘ Reid’s Sub-pulverizer ?’ Can the 
 bruited names of Thaer and Liebig (all honour to 
 them notwithstanding!) stand alone against the 
 
21 
 
 gifted tongues and pens of Johnstone, Playfair, 
 Buckland, Daubeny, Henslow, Pusey, Morton, 
 Rham, Hillyard, and a dozen more ardent Pioneers 
 of Agricultural Science who can scarcely keep 
 a-head of the van of practical experimentalists that 
 are crowding our periodicals with their valued 
 offerings to the Infant Art ? The very questions 
 suggest their own answer: for they shew that our 
 manufacturing skill has already begun to address 
 itself to Agriculture with such power, that we are 
 already perhaps (if we only knew it!) the most ad¬ 
 vanced among the Nations, both in Mechanical and 
 Chemical Agriculture. Then why not let us know 
 it ? Why box ourselves up from the rest of man¬ 
 kind, as if, after beating them in every other art, 
 we shrunk from facing them in this ? The truth 
 is, that the agriculturists as a body do not know 
 their own power. We have distrusted it for 
 thirty years, and are diffident of ourselves from 
 want of practice in the wide and healthy field 
 of human competition. We are separated from 
 each other by our acres, and do not act together 
 and learn our united force, with the esprit de 
 corps which nerves and animates the more social 
 and concentrated energies of our manufacturing 
 brethren, and makes their efforts irresistible. We 
 have substituted a reciprocally injurious and disas¬ 
 trous home-competition in our childish attempt to 
 shut out the common and legitimate object of our 
 emulation. Let any body who doubts this, read 
 the admirable joint-enquiry of Mr. Morton and Mr. 
 
Trimmer, recently published. The names of such 
 writers are a guarantee as well for the capability 
 and fidelity of their research, as for the practical 
 value of their conclusions: and they show by a 
 close and quantitative! system of analysis, that would 
 drive conviction into a gate-post, that instead of 
 making ‘the foreigner’ pay duty to us, we are 
 paying duty to each other. Peter who farms a 
 Barley Soil in Norfolk, pays duty for his Bread, 
 and every Bean he gives his horses, to Paul who can 
 grow nothing else on his stiff clay in Warwickshire; 
 and who if he were not the best-tempered fellow 
 in the world, would drink confusion to Peter 
 and his Barley-growing brethren of Norfolk, 
 and the Hop-growers of Kent into the bargain, 
 every time he puts a glass of treble-taxed Beer to 
 his lips. 
 
 The Oat-grower of the Lincolnshire Fens must 
 not grumble forsooth at the tribute he pays to the 
 Dairymen of Cheshire, Gloucester, Wilts, and 
 Somerset, because he makes their Landlords pay it 
 back again in the duty he levies on every bushel of 
 oats they give to their Hunters or Cart-horses. We 
 have established amongst ourselves a system of mu¬ 
 tual pillage and deception, in which the Landlord 
 and Farmer do not gain by any, while the poor 
 Labourer suffers by ail. His only capital are his 
 thews and sinews; and the more Food and Raiment 
 he can get for their loan, the better for him. The 
 preposterous assumption that their value rises 
 and falls with the price of wheat, would be too 
 
23 
 
 much honoured by a new refutation. It might as 
 well be said that the price of Locomotives rises and 
 falls with the price of Coke —because they consume 
 it! Hands, like every other production of nature, 
 are valuable as they are in request, and must be 
 paid for accordingly. 
 
 But we must not wander amongst the tombs of 
 arguments that are out of date. Like the Cuckoo 
 in July, their note where it is not extinguished is so 
 flattened as to be intolerable to every ear attuned to 
 the truthful harmonies of Nature. Our business is 
 with the Future, not the Past. Indeed the bare 
 enunciation of the Text that the English Agricul¬ 
 turist must begin to think whether he cannot manu¬ 
 facture Corn cheap enough to undersell the foreigner 
 in his own market, is a monster proposition of such 
 voracious look, that it must either, like Aaron’s rod, 
 swallow up all the others, or be swallowed itself. It 
 gives and takes no quarter. It either exterminates 
 every vestige of the old doctrines about keeping up 
 prices, or they must all come back together, and 
 like the poisoned monarch push the usurper from 
 the throne. But they must first ‘ make the river run 
 backward to its source’ instead of onward to the 
 ocean, by falsifying every principle deduced from 
 the experience of other manufactures: for the 
 Anomaly of Agriculture cannot stand alone. 
 
 « We would exhort those,” say Mr. Morton and Mr. Trimmer, 
 at the conclusion of their elaborate and able investigation into 
 the effects of the Corn Laws—“ in whom the approaching 
 
24 
 
 destruction of the ‘ protective’ system excites such terror, to 
 calculate for themselves the extent to which these duties in¬ 
 crease the cost of cultivation and the value of returns under 
 that system of farming with which they are best acquainted. 
 We have supplied some data; the rest they possess themselves. 
 They cannot enter fairly on the calculation without being 
 convinced that to the Tenant, the System is on the whole more 
 injurious than beneficial; that to the labourer it is decidedly 
 detrimental ; that no one can gain by it but the Landlord; 
 that ltd cannot be permanently benefitted by that which injures the 
 tenant and the labourer; that he often loses on one description 
 of land what he seems to gain on another; that his utmost 
 supposed gains are not to be compared with those which he would 
 derive from the Security conferred on Agricultural pursuits by 
 Natural Prices ; the increased confidence and energy that 
 would attend them; the increased capital that would 
 flow into them; and the increased Produce raised at diminished 
 tost, which these would call forth.” 
 
 But these supposed gains on the part of the Land¬ 
 lord are worse than imaginary. Let any man who 
 has watched the rise and fall of the Share-market, or 
 the Corn-market, or of the value of ‘ Stock,’ whether 
 Commercial or Agricultural, say what one thing 
 that he knows, has the most fatally depreciating 
 effect upon property of every kind and description ? 
 His answer will be, that of all other causes the 
 panic-feeling of Apprehension is the most ruin¬ 
 ously and unreasonably depressing. Let any Banker 
 at the head of his Clerks, let any Commander at 
 the head of his Army, let any human being raised 
 above his fellow-men by the possession of Capital, 
 Command, or Responsibility (and the first entails 
 the other two) say what thing he dreads most, 
 
25 
 
 as exercising over men’s minds a power the most 
 difficult to control or reason down P His answer 
 will be the same. And who stands in a position 
 more obnoxious to these influences than the Land¬ 
 lord ? From the moment that he made his property 
 the subject of Legislative ‘protection’ it has been 
 the very sport of Parliament. Session after Session, 
 as surely as the year came round, came Mr. Villiers 
 with his lengthening minorities and speeches for 
 “ Repeal of the Corn Laws.” The very sound of 
 the words hung, like the Sword of Damocles, over 
 every acre in Britain : and the fears of men, greater 
 in proportion to their ignorance of the nature and 
 extent of the possible calamity that approached them, 
 beheld afar the coming evil with the magnifying 
 distortion said to exist in the Horse’s eye. No 
 form of words was too comprehensively threatening, 
 to paraphrase the expression—no collateral mischief 
 too remote to be included in the overwhelming and 
 national ruin that was to follow the expulsion from 
 our Statute-book of this childish invention that was 
 to regulate the most important commerce of the 
 world, the Corn-trade of Britain, by the ‘political 
 acupuncturation’ of a joiner’s rule. Its utter and 
 signal failure in practice, freshly and increasingly 
 developed in each succeeding year, whether of dearth 
 or plenty, eluded notice solely from its intricacy 
 and complication: like the renowned General Tom 
 Thumb, it became great by its very littleness; and 
 men willingly wore other men’s opinions on the 
 subject, like a Livery, from the hopeless trouble or 
 
26 
 
 sheer impossibility of forming one of their own. 
 The panic-cry of ‘ The Danes!’ in the ears of our 
 Saxon Ancestors was not more hateful or terrific, 
 though much more reasonable, than that of ‘ Aboli¬ 
 tion of the Corn Laws !’ to their gregarious des¬ 
 cendants : and both will live in the after-pages of 
 the Philosophy of History as memorable testimonies 
 of the permanency of error, the influence of an 
 obstinate and groundless fear, and of the power of 
 one hold mind to dispel it like a dream. Of all 
 the interests of the State, the Property of the 
 Landlord was the most injured by the delusion that 
 gave the power to this fatal and perpetual cry : 
 whilst with the pertinacity, but not the knowledge 
 of the Spartan boy, he hugged to his breast the fox 
 that was preying upon his vitals. Those who have 
 resided or travelled in ill-governed Countries 
 (blessed be God, the Englishman must travel for 
 that experience !) know that of all depreciating 
 influences on the Value of land, insecurity of Te¬ 
 nure through liability to State interference, is the 
 most withering. In Portugal and Spain this con¬ 
 stant apprehension cuts at the root of all improve¬ 
 ment, investment, and enjoyment. Like the English 
 Tenant-at-Will, the Proprietor feels, under such a 
 government, more like the wandering Bedouinor the 
 nomad Scythian, than likea man who can reside, enjoy 
 and bequeath, and the aspect of theirEstates, though 
 of matchless fertility, is a reflecting mirror of the 
 demon-face of Insecurity. Next in mischief to the 
 fear of what a Government will do, is the fear of 
 
what it will undo. Parliament could - abolish 
 
 the Cork Laws! Why then the supposed value 
 of every estate in the kingdom was balanced upon 
 the annual “Yes” or “No” of the Legislature ; 
 for its honest value, whether to hold or sell, was 
 its value to let; (or Hudibras was very much 
 mistaken.) Can any man doubt for a moment 
 that when Parliament has ‘ done its worst’—if 
 that worst be found to be the very kindest 
 thing it could do, (to put the proposition with 
 modest hypothesis) — that every acre of every 
 estate in the kingdom will be relieved from 
 the groundless apprehensions of its cultivator and 
 proprietor, and like an inverted equation, change 
 the ‘ minus’ term to ‘ plus’ P Will not property 
 that is Parliament-proof be worth more than that 
 which was not, or what is effectively the same 
 conceived itself not to be, so ? The apprehension 
 itself, putting out of sight its truth or error, was a 
 depressing influence on the value of property (from 
 the very constitution of men’s minds) more serious 
 than could be caused by a very considerable change 
 in the market value of the produce; and the re¬ 
 covery from this typhoid prostration, would be 
 no light account to credit against any reasonable 
 fulfilment of the alarmist-prophecies. Sensitive as 
 the pulse of the market may be, mens minds are 
 more so, and the apprehension of evil is ever more 
 cruel in its effects than the evil itself, when it comes, 
 if it ever do. The shadows that coming events cast 
 before them are of monstrous dimensions: but the 
 
28 
 
 wise man while ‘ preparing for the worst’ wilt 
 ‘ hope for the best,’ and not run away till he see 
 what the dimension of the substance itself may be ; 
 what manner of beast the mountain will bring forth. 
 The looming of this same portentous shadow, the 
 long-protracted labour-throes of this mountain have 
 been injurious to the land-owner from the most con¬ 
 flicting causes: for while one half the world was 
 blaming him for not giving Leases to his Tenants, 
 the other half was advising responsible Tenants not 
 to accept them; and the number of wealthy appli¬ 
 cants for a vacant farm was diminished by the 
 general and natural reluctance to invest Capital in 
 a pursuit made irregular and unbusinesslike by Act 
 of Parliament. 
 
 The Channel-Islands have long furnished almost 
 a model of the British Isles as they would be, and 
 as they will be, under an unfettered Corn-trade. 
 They are allowed to send all their home-grown Corn 
 to us, and to import for their own consumption an 
 unlimited supply Duty-free. And what is the as¬ 
 pect of Agriculture, and the Rent of Land, there ? 
 In the first place, their Farming is what Dame 
 Quickly would call ‘ f a thing to thank God upon!” 
 The Dwarf sets an example that the Giant might 
 follow. The ‘ Jersey-plough’ walks into the 
 ground and turns you over twelve statute inches 
 of mortal soil with an ease that would make 
 the five-inch-teazing English ploughman rend 
 his smock-frock with agony, to behold. Their 
 acres are limited in width, so they increase 
 
29 
 
 them downwards. ‘ And what’-stop a mo¬ 
 ment,—I know what you are going- to ask- 
 
 ‘ What is the Rent of land there ?’ Far beyond 
 what it is in England. Drain and Subsoil your 
 own, and let your Tenants farm as they do, and 
 you will see why. You will find that by doubling 
 the depth of your cultivated soil, you may in¬ 
 crease your estate and lessen your Poor-Rates. 
 
 Puzzling and deceptive as the restricted Corn- 
 trade has been to the Farmer, cruel as it has been 
 to the Labourer, its ultimate and cumulative hard¬ 
 ship has fallen where every weight falls in 
 the end, upon the Landlord. To him its fatal 
 illusion, that “ kept the word of promise to the ear 
 and broke it to the hope,” has been like a perpe¬ 
 tual blister. Even the most intelligent applicant 
 for a farm, who knew best how little was to be 
 feared from ‘ foreign competition,’ and had slyly 
 read during some long winter’s evening Mr. Meek’s 
 collected Reports from the Corn-exporting countries 
 of Europe, declaring with one voice that they already 
 sent us all they could, and if we leant more we must 
 send them the money to grow it —and had watched 
 with prescient eye the gradual conversion, over 
 Europe, of Corn -exporting into Corn-importing 
 countries, whilst the produce of our own was actually 
 overtaking our enormous population and beginning 
 to shew the table-turning symptoms of diminishing 
 price against an increasing demand ;—even such 
 a man as this knew his own interest too well not to 
 brandish before his intended Landlord’s eyes the 
 
lowered price of corn as an unanswerable argu¬ 
 ment for a lower Rent, wisely suppressing- the er¬ 
 roneous postulate which the Squire took for a granted 
 axiom, to wit, that ‘ Corn and Rent must fall toge¬ 
 ther.’ And ‘ if such things were done in the green, 
 what should be done in the dry ?’ if the rich Tenant 
 was wise enough to wink at a national blunder 
 which hurt him the less the more the Squire be¬ 
 lieved it, what should the poor one do who was con¬ 
 strained to sell in a glutted market his Michaelmas 
 Wheat to pay his Michaelmas Rent, to whom reap¬ 
 ing, threshing, selling and paying, were one con¬ 
 tinuous operation ? Little knew he while he was 
 cracking the cheeks of his winnowing-machine, to 
 blow the dust out of his corn, and looking with 
 fond credulity at the August prices, that there 
 was another machine at ivork that would blow the 
 dust back into his own eyes when that second week 
 in September should come upon him, and with it 
 the clearing out of every Bonded Warehouse in 
 England, discharging upon the early market of 
 the poorer farmer, the whole foreign accumula¬ 
 tions of the year in “ one little week.” 
 
 -“ Heu ! quoties Fidem 
 
 Mutatosque deos flebit, et aspera 
 Nigris aequora ventis 
 Emirabitur insolens, 
 
 Qui nunc te fruitur credulus aurea, 
 
 Qui semper aurcam, semper amabilem 
 Sperat, nescius auras 
 Fallacis !” 
 
31 
 
 Alas ! how oft the faithless tale, 
 
 The altered looks, shall he bewail! 
 
 The ruffled wave ’neath lowering gale * 
 
 Who, love-lost, wondering sees ! 
 
 Though now he clasps thy golden form! 
 
 And ever golden, ever warm, 
 
 Still fondly hopes thee, recks not harm! 
 
 Nor knows the fickle breeze ! 
 
 Bat if the Landowner was the last to be convinced, 
 he will be the first to be benefited, for Capital has 
 quick ears for a sure Investment: tired of wander¬ 
 ing to and fro, ‘ gathering’ but little ‘ moss’ upon 
 the Railways, we shall soon see it give up travelling 
 to the young and inexperienced, to settle down 
 upon the goodly acres at home, and become a ‘ re¬ 
 spectable country gentleman.’ They need him, 
 and will be grateful to him, Heaven knows! Ask 
 any Landlord, wise or simple, what is the whip that 
 speeds the plough, what is the manure that doubles 
 the crop of his best Tenants ? his answer will be, 
 capital ! but who will freight his goods in a vessel 
 that sails under false colours ? Who will invest his 
 fortune where he dare not take a Lease? The com¬ 
 petition for Farms is great, but count out the appli¬ 
 cants, and you will find it is the competition of 
 Poverty not of Capital. Send your agent to assess 
 the Rent at a ‘ Fair Valuation :’ his report will be 
 a blind guess-work of “ proviso and exception ” 
 upon Corn-law contingencies, upon the tender 
 mercies of Parliamentary f Protection,’ which like 
 
 Query ‘ Sliding Scale V — Printer’s Devil. 
 
32 
 
 the vampyre fans its dreaming victim with the insi¬ 
 dious breath of hope, while it draws away the 
 source of life. 
 
 Is there no Protection in Nature P Can the 
 frail device of man protect more surely than He can, 
 who with unerring Wisdom and Beneficence has 
 constituted the free intercourse of Nations, by the 
 reciprocal interests and benefits of commerce, to 
 be the Forge in which the Sword shall be beaten into 
 the Plough-share P And shall we who have used so 
 well the elder weapon, shrink coward-like from the 
 nobler encounter, with every advantage on our 
 side, and every good presage to cheer us on ? We 
 have crouched to the earth long enough, under this 
 imaginary cannonade of Bread-balls from the bat¬ 
 teries of ‘ the foreigner,’ but the same spirit still 
 lives which responded to the electric words that 
 gave the welcome relief, and the same voice still 
 speaks to give the altered charge— 
 
 “ Up F4RMERS! and at 'em /” 
 
 J. Ollivier, 59 Pall Mall.