265 XLV. HARBOURS OF REFUGE. WE hear a good deal of the profits of our vast commercial fleet; it may be as well sometimes to look at its losses also. They represent something considerable in £.s.d., and take more of the gilt off the gingerbread than is generally supposed. During the twelve months 1881-82, 705 sailing and steam ships, with their cargoes, were totally lost on the coasts of these islands. Three thousand sailing and steam ships, with their cargoes, were more or less seriously damaged or lost, and 1,021 British sailors were drowned. I believe that, taking sailing ships and steamers together, it is approximately fair to put them at 200 tons each. Therefore 705 ships, of 200 tons each, represent a total of 140,000 tons; and valuing ship and cargo together at 201. per ton (and I do not think this is too high), this represents a total loss to the community of 2,800,000l. In the same way, 3,000 ships, of 200 tons each, represent a total of 600,000 tons partially lost or damaged. Estimating this at 5l. per ton, we have a loss of 3,000,0007.a total loss in value of ships and cargo, in one year, of 5,800,000l. But there is another item more serious still, which is the loss of our seamen. During the last year 1,021 British sailors were drowned on our own coasts. What loss to the community do these thousand drowned men represent? It is difficult to appraise the value of flesh and blood. You may approximate the loss to the com munity in £.s.d., but who can approximate the loss to the living and the dead in agony, in despair, in misery? Most of our sailors earn on an average, directly or indirectly, 258. a week. If the community finds it worth its while to pay a man 25s. per week for his labour, it is fair to suppose that the community profits by this labour to the full extent of the 25s. it pays for it. How much it profits in excess of the 25s. no one knows. It may be 10 per cent., it may be 100 per cent. I will merely assume that the labour of each sailor drowned is worth to the community that employs him the amount of his wages. Every sailor, therefore, who is drowned is worth to the community 258. per week, and his loss is a loss to the community of 258. per week. How many years' work do we suppose there is in the men who go down to the sea in ships? Have they ten years' work in them, or fifteen, or twenty? Let us assume fifteen years. Therefore, the death of a sailor who has fifteen years' work in him is a loss to the community of 780 weeks' work, of the value of 258. per week, or say 1,000l. It is a fact, therefore, that for every British sailor drowned the British community lose in actual £.s.d. at the very least 1,000l. The debit side, therefore, of the account for the last twelve months stands as follows:-Total loss of 705 ships and cargo, 2,800,000l.; injury and partial loss of 3,000 ships and cargo, 3,000,000l.; loss of sailors' lives, 1,000,000l. Total, 6,800,0001. This enormous loss is incurred on the coasts of our own islands, close to our very doors, often in our sight and hearing. It does not include the loss of life and ships and property in other parts of the world. If a few breakwaters and harbours of refuge around our coasts would save some hundreds of these valuable lives or some millions of this valuable property, would it not appear to be a good national investment? To go further. Is it possible to construct a harbour of refuge on any one of the many dangerous parts of our coasts that would not pay the country, directly or indirectly, 100 per cent.? And if you can invest money at 100 per cent., is it unwise to borrow it at 3 per cent. in order to do so? XLVI. COMMON SENSE AND COVERED YARDS. THERE is no doubt of it, British farmers are between the devil and the deep sea. Their position is critical. Insufficient capital, foreign competition, bad seasons, want of enterprise, and an unwillingness or inability to adapt themselves to new conditions of agriculture have brought them to a bad fix. The number of farming failures has increased six times in ten years. Thousands have paid their debts and have nothing left. Many more are in debt all round, to their landlords, their bankers, their manure merchants, their seed merchants, and to their friends. All they can scrape together goes to pay the interest on borrowed money. Farmers, of course, are of all sorts. Some are sober, intelligent, laborious, enterprising, trying to do the best possible for their landlords and for themselves. Others are the very reverse of all this-wasting their time at fairs and markets, wanting in industry, enterprise, and common sense; crawling along in the old grooves that were cut by their forefathers three hundred years ago; letting the world pass them by; learning nothing, and indeed declining to be taught. Good or bad, however, intelligent or stupid, laborious or idle, in one point they are all alike—they have no money. It is a fact that ninety-nine out of every hundred of the tenant farmers of the United Kingdom are without the capital necessary to stock and cultivate their farms. In many parts of the country the land is divided up into small fields by enormous hedgerows; it is only partially drained, and the drains often entirely neglected; it is badly weeded, manured, and tilled; only half stocked, and the stock not half cared for; the farm buildings are often out of repair; there are no covered yards to protect the stock and preserve the manure; there is often a compulsory rotation of crops unsuited to the soil; there are few labour-saving machines; dairy-farming and beetrootgrowing are entirely neglected; the most rudimental science, even common sense, in farming matters, are absolutely ignored. Now this is, without any exaggeration, the condition of at least 525,000 out of the 550,000 farms in Great Britain. It is a fact that 90 per cent. of the land of the United Kingdom is farmed in a manner that, in the face of American competition, makes profit impossible. In all directions farms are being thrown up; in many places land is going out of cultivation, and this, be it especially remembered, with a very rapidly increasing population and an immensely increased consumption of food. Our wheat area has diminished a fourth, or 1,000,000 acres, in 10 years; 350,000 acres have been withdrawn from cultivation within the last 12 months. Between 1877 and 1879 we grew 6 per cent. less wheat, to feed 34,000,000 of people than we did between 1811 and 1836, to feed 17,000,000. The corn return for 1879 is the lowest since agricultural returns were first published. Corn crops, barley, beans, green crops, have fallen off; there are less sheep, less lambs, fewer pigs, fewer agricultural horses than there were. At the same time the draining, the weeding, the manuring, the tilling, and stocking of a great portion of the land have been 'scamped.' In favourable seasons, certainly, the farmers may live from hand to mouth, but in ordinary seasons they can only pay their rent by robbing the land, by handing to the landlord money that should properly be expended in stocking and cultivating his land. Of course, the capital value of land that is neglected and badly farmed steadily diminishes; and the tenant who pays away as rent the money that is indispensable to the proper cultivation of his farm is virtually paying his landlord out of his own capital. Free trade and foreign competition on a gigantic scale have completely revolutionised the agricultural conditions of Great Britain. She can now only hold her own home markets for grain, meat, and daily produce by employing increased capital and industry, higher cultivation, more liberal stocking and manuring, and by immediately adopting every improvement that science and experience can suggest. The old ideas and practices of farming are played out. British agriculturists must take an entirely new departure, and if they cannot, or will not, do so they will die out. No doubt we have had a succession of bad seasons, but did England ever have a succession of good ones? Bad seasons are our normal condition; it is no use growling about bad weather in England; it is a constant quantity, and has to be accounted for in all our calculations. Bad seasons alone do not account for the present agricultural distress. It is bad seasons combined with foreign competition that have caused the mischief. If British agriculture cannot stand against bad seasons, it is indeed in a bad state, for bad seasons are always with us. The question is, whether it can stand bad seasons and foreign competition combined. That is the question, and the answer is comprised in the formula, capital and common sense.' With capital and common sense, it is almost certain that British agriculture can not only stand against bad seasons and foreign competition, but will, moreover, give a good return to those who undertake to cultivate the land liberally and intelligently. Now, there is this peculiarity about the decline of agriculture in England, that it is not visible in any other country in the world. In Holland, Belgium, France, Portugal, Germany, America, India, Australia, in fact, in every known country, great or small, agricultural produce shows a steady annual increase. It is in England and |