husbandry. When iron implements were | vate acts of Parliament which constitute worth twopence a pound, that is to say, at so enormous a mass of legislation in the least two shillings a pound in modern supplementary statute books, the private money values, the culture of the soil was enclosures. The first of these was the superficial and the fertility of the surface enclosure of Ropley in Hampshire in was rapidly exhausted. Before the mid- 1709. Between 1725 and 1854 four thoudle of Elizabeth's reign the art of smelting sand one hundred and forty-one such bills cast iron was discovered, for a good deal were passed. There is no doubt that this of the queen's heavy ordnance was made expedient checked what would have natfrom this material. Nor is the price of urally happened, a great rise in rents, for wrought iron trebled as that of most other the result of these enclosures was to commodities is. In the fifteenth century enormously increase the area of arable it was worth from £5 to £8 a ton, in the land. But though Arthur Young, a genreign of Elizabeth from £10 to £14. For, erally acute observer, is under the imas the success of agriculture is a measure pression that no great increase occurred of the success with which other employ-in rents during the first three-quarters of ments can be prosecuted, as well as a the eighteenth century, that is during the leisure class can be maintained, so the period in which prices of produce were inventions of the mechanic materially assist the progress of agricultural art and lessen the cost of its operations. Now whatever theorists may say, it is certain that everything which has diminished the charges to which the agriculturist is put has pari passu, and in fact, raised rents. Another influence was, however, brought to bear on agriculture. The Tudors had prohibited the exportation of corn when the price rose above a certain amount. The Parliament of the Restoration prohibited the importation unless the price of wheat was over 48s. the quarter, and began to encourage its exportation. In 1670 the importation of Irish cattle was In Adam Smith's time, the landownabsolutely prohibited, one of that long ers were free-traders, the merchants and series of acts which, passed in the interest manufacturers protectionists, and Smith of the English landowners, have had the despairs of any reform in the direction of effect of making disaffection in Ireland free trade, owing to the "mean and machronic. It was in connection with this lignant sophisms" with which this writer, act that the Duke of Buckingham, the always impartial, and generally tolerant Buckingham of Dryden's and Pope's of discrepancies of opinion, charges the satire, observed that no one could oppose mercantile classes. Within less than it unless he had an Irish interest or an thirty years of Smith's death, opinion had Irish understanding. But, though agri- totally veered round, and the mean and culture was comparatively unprosperous malignant sophisms were in the mouths in the seventeenth century, great progress of the landowners. The merchants of was made in trade, and thus land became London adopted, presented, and defended a favorite investment. Rents increased the merchants' petition, and the agitation by four to sixfold in this century. was begun which repealed the corn-laws

exceedingly low, and the country had a considerable export trade in corn, yet the facts, even on the showing of his own Tours, are against him, for rents doubled in the period referred to. The discoveries of Watt, Arkwright, and others, had a prodigious effect on the distribution of labor and the growth of population, and a real though artificial scarcity, induced not by the pressure of population on the means of subsistence, nor by the necessity of having recourse to inferior soils, ensued under the agency of the corn-laws, which were a permanently disturbing force in the economy of agriculture.

give a defence, or an apparent defence, to noisy and importunate people are never dead, and that one generation after another will have to slay the slain.

In the beginning of the eighteenth in 1846. For it may be assumed with century another great improvement was certainty that self-interest never lacks introduced into England, and as before plausible arguments, that sophisms which from Holland, in the use of the so-called artificial grasses, clover, saintfoin, and ryegrass, the newspapers of the time being full of advertisements of the new appliances. Not only did the new grasses increase the stock of winter fodder, but, | entering into the system of rotating crops, narrowed still further the quantity set aside annually for fallow. At the same time, also, there began that series of pri

The chief feature of English agriculture during the period between 1790 and 1846 was the extent to which corn was grown. As an artificial scarcity was induced on the food of the people, it became an object with every farmer to sow

the largest breadth possible. On some possible that his landlord may instantly fields of more than ordinary fertility it appropriate them. Some years ago, a was the custom to sow white crops year tenant farmer in the Dukeries, unable to after year, and even wheat. I remember make head against the ravages of game, when a youth to have seen such fields determined on growing potatoes for the pointed out to me by my father, who lived Nottingham market, for it seems that through, and remembered all the facts of ground game do not care for potatoes, that disastrous epoch, when the demand and winged animals do not damage the for labor and the high prices of food told crop. But the invention no great one with terrible effect on the poorer classes, was so easily imitable, that the very who, as Mr. Porter well observed in his next year the duke's agent quadrupled his "Progress of the Nation," actually bore, rent, putting it at nearly the rate of marthough indirectly, the burden of that ter- ket gardens. Hence the tendency of the rible war. At the same time, the evil was farmer's invention is towards these not without its compensations. Under branches of his art, the advantages of the extraordinary stimulus of high prices, which he can long retain, or retain perfarmers discovered that land hitherto un-manently, and particularly towards the cultivated possessed such qualities as breeding of stock. It is a commonplace would give them a greater return, rela- to point to the rapidity with which anitively to cost, than land long under culti-mals in modern times are made fit for the vation afforded, the real reason why new market, the size to which the ox or sheep land is put under the plough. For as it is brought, and the weight of the fleece is certain that new processes and new in the latter. In the fourteenth century, materials are manipulated by manufac- the average weight of the fleece was unturers, not with the hope of obtaining der one-and-a-half pounds. The average equal profits with those obtained by old weight of the four quarters of an ox was processes and old materials, but with the under four hundredweights, of a sheep conviction that greater profits are to be thirty-three pounds, and three or four obtained by the change, so we may be years were passed before the animal was sure that, unless the motives which influ- brought to maturity. During the last ence agriculturists are wholly different hundred years, the weight of the Leicesfrom those which are dominant with the ter fleece has nearly been trebled in rest of mankind, the breaking up of old amount. And the same phenomena have pasture, especially hill pasture, the selec-occurred in root crops and seeds. tion of seeds and breeds of cattle, the may be confidently averred that, owing to adoption of mechanical aids in lieu of the improvements in stock and seeds, human or animal labor, are due, espe- agriculture in the United Kingdom is at cially in a class which is peculiarly con- a higher level than in any other country. servative in its habits, and averse to But people do not trouble themselves change, to a clear apprehension of their enough about the economical cause of own future profit on the transaction. the fact.

The directions in which agricultural science has been improved during the last fifty years, are, as might be expected, chiefly those of an economy in cost, and especially in the cost of bringing animals to maturity. Just as in manufactures, the first man who finds out some great economy in the cost of production reaps as much of the benefits of his discovery as arises from the difference between the new scale of charges and the price at which he is able to command the markets by underselling his competitors, so the agriculturist who invents or improves has at first all the profit to himself, for the landowner cannot bring to bear on him the competition of other occupants. But unlike other inventors, he cannot protect his process by a patent, or even by secrecy. All his operations are in the open, and his neighbors may copy them. It is

It

In the fifteenth century, and in the first quarter of the sixteenth, the agricultural laborer's wages could frequently supply him with a quarter of malt, or four bushels of wheat a week, for he seldom earned less than two shillings a week, and malt was often sold for two shillings, wheat for four shillings a quarter during this period. In the sixteenth century his wages rose to eightpence a day, but the price of wheat was generally, after the full effect on prices was induced, over twenty shillings a quarter. His condition became worse in the seventeenth century, was bettered in the eighteenth, and was worst of all in the first half of the nineteenth.

The most remarkable effect on English rents was induced by the repeal of the Till. within the last year or two the rent of land has steadily risen,

corn-laws.

395

notwithstanding the ominous predictions | social rank, because they are able to trace which were made in 1846, as to the effect the inconvenience of their present posiof that salutary statute on the landed tion to the trammels in which they have interest. A succession of bad harvests allowed themselves to be bound. It is the present, I believe, without a paral- well known that in several English counlel since those of 1315, 1316, 1438, 1569, ties the condition of landowners, hitherto 1597, 1649, 1709-10, 1799-1801, and 1809-in comparatively affluent circumstances, 17 has arrested this progress, and made has become one of serious embarrassit even necessary, probably only as a tem- ment. Not infrequently, it is said, the porary measure, to remit part of the rent nominal owner of an estate is indebted which the tenant has bargained to pay. It to the extent of three-fifths of his income, is probable also, that just as the enormous and being constrained, under present cirextent of open ground which was en-cumstances, to forego twenty per cent. of closed in the eighteenth century checked his rent, is, for the time at least, absolutely the natural rise in rents during that penniless. There can be no greater conperiod: so, practically, the addition of an trast conceived than that between the enormous and increasing area of wheat- false security in which people, possessed growing land in western America, the of what seem to be fixed incomes, stand construction of extensive railways in that now, and the prudence and economy excountry, and the cheapening of freights hibited by our forefathers. Men lived will check any rise above the old rents, hardly in the later Middle Ages, for sciand even drive them lower than they have ence had not yet discovered how to obviate been. But this is part of the risk which risk, or at least to diminish it. But in all investments of capital run, land not the very numerous accounts which I have excepted. It is as reasonable for the studied of wealthy nobles, and large and landowner to claim that he should re-im-small corporations, monastic and secular, pose a bread tax, or transfer charges on his land which compensate beneficial outlay, or the satisfaction of purely local duties, as it would be for the owner of canal property to demand that his interest should be paid, when the function which he once performed is superseded by another which is cheaper and better. There is, and there can be, no reason beyond illegitimate and selfish power, to be alleged in favor of keeping certain people's income up, by taking something away from everybody else's income. It is true that there are some people who make the claim, but there are no claims too impudent for some men's cynicism. But the audacity is the greater when, much of the home crops being destroyed by game, the people are to be told that, in addition to this destruction and consequent enhancement of natural value, a further and more vexatious charge should be imposed upon the consumer.

I have found it invariably the case that the owner or owners never allowed themselves to be without half-a-year's income in hand, and this even in the worst times. It may be found that general unthrift may produce disasters more widespread and more lasting than any calamity which arises from the effects of rash speculation, and we have lately learnt that what has hitherto been deemed to be the most staple source of revenue may disappoint its owner more seriously than any other investment will, if it suffer from the caprice of the seasons, and the blind confidence, or careless prodigality, or silly pride of its nominal possessor.

That which has been characteristic of English agricultural life, the common outlay of owner and tenant, has been wholly wanting or absent in Ireland. That there have been, especially during the last thirty years, improving Irish landlords may well be believed. But such persons It will seem that at all times there has are rare exceptions and a late growth. been a genuine partnership in expense As the English imported their Church between the English landowner and the into Ireland, so they imported an English English farmer. It would have been aristocracy into that country, and an Encloser and more advantageous to both, glish land system, which was not, like had not the former been permitted to tie that of this country, a slow growth to himself by the absurd, the mischievous, which English social life has more or less and the immoral conditions of a tenancy conveniently accommodated itself, but a for life in an estate of inheritance. For- violent expedient, imposed by a decision tunately, the wiser landowners are begin- of the Irish King's Bench as late as ning to see the mischief of the system the reign of James I. It is very likely which they have hitherto imagined to be that the tribal tenure of Irish land was the most effectual guarantee of their unfriendly to agricultural progress, a lewd

custom, as the lawyers of the day alleged. | elements of the Irish character, and the But it is quite certain that the substitu- amazing selfishness with which English tion of English for Irish tenures was the manufacturers and English landowners first and the most enduring cause of that coerced Irish industry into the solitary, or agrarian disaffection, which either breaks almost solitary, condition of cottier tenout in acts of local ferocity, or organizes ancy, fully explain the backward state of resistance to the landowners' rents. The the country, and the undying dislike of Irish landowner has never improved his the Irish to the political or social system estate, except to the extent of building of England. The English government, his own mansion. Some time ago, an after the treaty of Limerick, wished to Irish landowner complained to me that support and extend the Protestant interhis class had been stigmatized as vermin est in Ireland, and they scarcely spared by some agrarian orator. I could only any means to effect this end. But they answer that the epithet was very rude, destroyed the object which they professed and probably very irritating, but that by a commercial system, so harsh, so selfthere seemed no better definition of ver- ish, so searching, that the Irishman was min than that of animals who live on the forced to become a peasant tenant_at soil, but do not contribute to its fertility will, at a rent settled by an auction. Ireand usefulness, and that this had unluck- land might have been a great breedingily been also very much an accurate defi- ground for cattle and sheep, but the internition of an Irish landowner. The matter ests of the English landowners forbade was aggravated when the landowner was the exportation of stock to England, or to an absentee, and therefore seemed not any other country. In short, Ireland was unnaturally to be levying a tribute, or ex- governed more ignorantly in the eighacting a tax, for which he rendered no teenth century than India is now, and far equivalent service whatever, and which more dangerously, for the effects remain, had to be paid, as adverse balances must and are, probably, ineradicable. Shallow be paid, by forcing exports and lowering politicians are often irritated and amazed prices. It was in Ireland that the maxim when the concession of urgent demands is was first enunciated, that property has its not immediately followed by quiet and duties as well as its rights, but there is no content. But a reform in law is not country in the world where the right has always accompanied by a reform in the been so severely enforced, and the duty process of law, and even if it were, the so steadily omitted. mischief done in a past age is not by any means cured by a grudging acknowledg ment that a change is inevitable and necessary in order to avoid worse consequences. There is no forgiveness for errors in politics. The evil which is done is sure to come home, and make itself felt, just as the agues which travellers contract in certain countries reappear years after the disease was caught and apparently met by remedies.

There was a time when it seemed probable that the English settlement in Ireland would have spread English customs naturally among the people. In the reign of Edward I., Roger Bigod, the great Earl of Norfolk, had a considerable Irish estate within the English pale, which was managed as carefully and as well as the English property of this noble. The slight and transitory picture which the records of this estate afford show that There is yet another set of facts conEnglish agriculture was familiar in Ire- nected with English rents which has to be land, that English markets had been briefly handled, the relations, past and introduced into some of the Irish towns, present, of the farm laborer to his emand that prosperous manufactures, for the ployer. After two centuries of vain legistime, were a local industry, especially in lation upon the rate of wages, the Parlialinen and woollen cloth. But it also ap- ment of 1563, by the famous statute of pears that the Ireland of Bigod's time, at apprenticeship, put the regulations of the least that part of it in which he held prop-rates of wages into the hands of the magerty, was more civilized and prosperous [istrates in quarter sessions. It is not than any part of the country was four centuries after that time, when the last serious struggle took place between the two races. Successive confiscations, the gratification of English land hunger in Ireland, the success with which the native Irish assimilated their conquerors to themselves in everything but the better

necessary to assume that the queen intended, in her assent to this measure, to confer the right of fixing wages on those whose interest it was to keep them low, for in the age of this queen it was believed to be expedient that prices should be fixed by law, and that such prices as were fixed should be enforced by competent

e

authority. It takes a great deal of expe- | double or three times that of the best. rience, coupled with a great deal of wis- His wages may have been increased withdom, to see that authority in matters of out any increase in their purchasing bargain and sale should be generally used power, and the increase may be, probably for the purpose of enforcing, of interpret- is, due to the increasing and necessary ing, and occasionally of modifying con- strictness with which poor-law relief is tracts, in the light of equity, and that it accorded to the able-bodied. It cannot should rarely, and only under special be doubted that such an increase has circumstances, interfere with freedom of affected, and will affect, rents, though, contract. The experiment which Eliza- owing to the fact that the price obtained beth made was disastrous, for the recur- for the secondary products of agriculture, rence of low prices, though fully expected, meat and dairy produce, has increased never arrived, and after other expedients so enormously, rents have till latterly had been tried, the legal relief of destitu- risen, notwithstanding the increased cost tion appeared to be the only remedy for of labor. Suppose, on a farm assessed at low wages, though a law assigning a cer- £500, poor-rates have been diminished by tain quantity of land to every peasant's sixpence in the pound. The farmer or cottage, enough, that is to say, to main- landowner, as the case may be, will have tain him, had been passed, and was saved £12 10s. in his outgoings. But if allowed at once to fall into desuetude. the wages of labor are increased twentyThe English poor-law is historically a five per cent., and he has twenty hands bargain by which the poor, in considera- on his farm, at an average of 155. a week, tion of having been ousted from their it is easy to see that the cost of labor has inheritance in the soil of their country, been greatly increased on the one hand, were to be maintained from its produce. and very slightly lessened on the other. Practically, however, the legal relief of Still less is he benefited if the charges of destitution enabled the landowners to the poor-law are transferred to the consolprocure cheap labor at the common cost idated fund, and he pays income-tax on of all occupants, and thereby put much of his profits. Much that he has saved, or the charge of labor on those who do not seemed to save, goes ultimately to the employ labor with a view to profit; and, landowner, and he has to pay the cost under the law of parochial settlement, which has been transferred from his poortied the peasant down to a serfdom more rate to the income-tax out of his peculiar degrading and more hopeless than any profits, and from which tax he cannot form of feudal servitude short of absolute escape. It is wonderful that English slavery.

farmers did not see that when Sir Stafford Northcote candidly told them that the first addition made to the income-tax by the present government was due to the cost incurred by paying the extra charges of the pauper lunatic asylums, they were compelled to improve the landlords' rents at the cost of farmers' profits.

The wages of labor have been increased of late years. Lord Beaconsfield says they have increased forty per cent. in the last forty years. The statement may be true, but the figures are suspiciously round, and Lord Beaconsfield is very apt to get his facts and quotations secondhand. But if the fact be indisputable, it The landowner and the farmer have a is also certain that with the exception of real grievance in the education rate. The bread and clothing, all the other articles education of the poor is not the satisfacof ordinary consumption have risen much tion of a local duty, or a beneficial outlay more than forty per cent. Till within the to those who pay the charges of such an last year or two, meat, butter, cheese, ba- education. It is a national duty, to be con, and milk were fully double, some- satisfied partly as a corrective to criminal times treble, the prices at which they tendencies, partly as a means by which stood before the repeal of the corn-laws the collective security and prosperity of took place, and before the extension of the community may be increased. If one the railway system made these provisions examines the subject, national education dearer in country than in town. The is a service done to all alike, and, like the peasant's house-rent, once nominal, is public defence, it should be defrayed by 0 now a serious item in his expenditure. all alike, in as equitable a manner as is He is rarely seen to be in possession, as he once was, of a half-acre piece attached to his cottage; but if he gets any land at all, is lucky if he possesses an allotment t in the poorest soil of the parish, at a rent

possible in taxation. It does not benefit the child from a material point of view, for if all persons were equally educated, no one could earn more wages than be fore, though the intellectual level on which