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been reduced lower and lower; their capital has been diminishing, and the land has been so rapidly deteriorating, that soils of inferior description have been taken out of cultivation altogether,"-let Parliament beware how they comply with the DO NOTHING exhortation of their Commissioners, least the fate which their predecessors escaped with deserving, they themselves both merit and endure !

The country is now in a temper not to be trifled with :-rather, the distress has reached a crisis no longer bearable; the schools of the economists have had their day; the fine-spun systems of the reciprocity clique have run their course, and one after another have reached the CHECK! The doctrines even of Malthus and Ricardo, however theoretically entitled to be scouted at, are at the present moment substantially exemplified in our social condition. Society has been too long amused with the brilliant soap-bubble speculations which a set of philosophers have floated upon the popular breath, on the one hand, or with the plain homethrust arguments of those who have simply contented themselves with poking their walking-sticks through them, on the other! We have talked enough, and now we must act. Shall we then continue the juggle? Or is it at length time to retrace the steps which we have lost in pursuing a phantom? It will be well if society shall discover though late rather than never, that a want of attention to our social interests is the true cause of our social distresses; and that the only method of regenerating Britain will be to make improvement in Britain our first-and middle—and last concernment. It is perfectly disgraceful to the age in which we live, and to the position we occupy in civilized existence, that with a larger share of the elements of national wealth than what any other kingdom in Europe can boast of, we have comparatively a larger share of national misery. There is something rotten in our state at home, which demands a

prompt and extensive legislative revision. A change must be effected in our domestic relations. Live and let live must prove our rule in the time to come, instead of being-as now and heretofore the exception. And conformity to the wise and generous precept of the poet - "EACH AID THE OTHERS." must henceforth remedy the evils which the maxim " EACH FOR HIMSELF" has accumulated.

In the spirit of these remarks, and having animadverted upon what the Agricultural Committee have not done, we next proceed to shew what under ordinary cir cumstances a simple and direct purpose on their part to improve the condition of the agricultural interest, and through them the interests of the whole community, might have suggested. After stating, as a preamble in general terms, that they found from the evidence produced, that the condition of the farmers was one of deep and universal distress, - that they are not a prosperous body of monopolists, grinding the faces of the other classes to obtain exorbitant prices upon their outlay,—but, on the contrary, an impoverished one, to whom the prices they realize, however they may be considered high, are actually unremunerative, and that if bread be dear to the buyer, it is equally dear to the seller,—that if the consumer cannot afford to purchase it at what it costs, the grower cannot afford to sell it for what he pockets,—and that, therefore, the condition of both is alike indigent, alike wretched, and alike unsupportable; they might have proceeded to comment, in the terms which it deserves, upon the evil effects which such a system has produced, in abridging national consumption and industry, and the manifest advantages that will mutually arise to the manufacturing, and all other productive classes, from the regeneration of a body so large and influencing as that of the agriculturists. The Committee could then have proceeded to state that they found the production and consumption of the country totally unbalanced, and this arising from

the plain and obvious circumstance that during the last quarter of a century the conveniences of life have been increased and cheapened artificially to a vast extent, whilst no corresponding increase and cheapening of the necessaries of life has accompanied it. That this circumstance, after proving through a series of years mutually injurious to grower and consumer, has reached a crisis no longer compatible with the well-being of either, and that it is essential for,-not simply the prosperity, but the existence of both, that it shall be remedied in a way that will prove equally protective to both interests. That cheap food, by foreign importation, curtailing consumption yet more, would immensely aggravate instead of lessen the evil; and that therefore, as a change is absolutely required to preserve the industry and tranquillity of the Country, the Committee might, in all conscience, have felt themselves fully warranted to recommend it urgently to the attention of Parliament that the burdens pressing so greviously upon agricultural skill and enterprize should be forthwith taken off to an extent sufficient to admit of the reduction in the price of food, which is required.

Considering the difficulties in which all classes of the community find themselves placed, and the utter inefficacy of any and every change which shall merely convert public distress and not exterminate it, the Committee might reasonably have proceeded (after acknowledging that whilst the happiest results may be expected from the change in the Bank Charter Bill, by which the restrictive principle of 1819 is virtually abandoned-from a further reduction of taxation-the contemplated commutation of tithes-and taking off the malt-tax)—to state their best hopes of the permanent and adequate amelioration of the agricultural interest to be founded upon a change in the social economy of the nation; that since the war the fall of rents, and the fall of prices have by no means borne due proportion to each other, a cir

cumstance which has shortened leases, produced scourging croppage and deteriorated cultivation, with mutual disadvantage to landlord and tenant; that the administration of the poor-rates has been so criminally mismanaged as to allow the evil to grow, by what it has fed upon, to the extent of eight millions and a half annually, instead of being given (to the aged and infirm alone excepted) in the shape of employment, of such a sort as shall contribute to their gradual extinction; that the importation of grain into England from Ireland, where rates are unknown and taxes comparatively nominal, along with the starving hordes of wretched peasantry that ought to consume it at home, is highly injurious to both countries, and that a prohibition upon such an iniquitous export may be beneficially compensated to the latter by a tax upon absenteism, and throwing annually into her hands the 15,000,000l. sterling now exported for the flax, cotton, hemp, corn, tobacco, &c.* which nothing but the anti-social system we have hitherto been pursuing has prevented her from raising upon her own fertile surface; while last, not least, the consumption, and consequent industry, of large classes of our producers has been curtailed by the imprudent importation to a vast amount of various kinds of commodities, which can, and therefore ought to, be exclusively fa

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We live, however, under extraordinary circumstances, which render even these suggestions unnecessary. For we stand upon the eve of a total revolution in the domestic relations of society.-One which will alike render vain the endeavours of that party who, true to the interests of their native soil, are determined that Parliament shall exercise a "CAUTIOUS FORBEARANCE" as regards the removal of the corn-laws, and the machinations of that other party, the more numerous by far, who are equally determined that Parliament shall exercise an ACTIVE INTERPOSITION" for their removal!

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The application of STEAM to economic purposes, i.e. to the removal of brute labour, is no longer a matter of doubt. The progress lately made in locomotive science, as the report given elsewhere in this number testifies, warrants the conclusion that the country stands upon the eve of a change in the means of internal transport, which will relieve society of all the evils attendant upon its reaching the limit. In sitting, therefore, upon an enquiry into the condition of the agricultural classes, it might have been expected that the Committee would have considered what effect, a coming event which has so long cast its shadow before it, was likely to produce upon the consumption of the country. Though the matter was urged upon their attention, it was however treated with an imbecility or ignorance which strongly characterizes the investigation.

The duty, therefore, devolves upon us, in the prosecution of the object which we have undertaken to advocate; and we discharge it with sincere regard for the safety and prosperity of the first and best of our domestic interests to warn the landed and farming classes of the danger which will infallibly arise to them unless steam transport and steam cultivation shall be introduced simultaneously.

As long as proprietors had the German Ocean between them and foreign corn, and the House of Commons to fight their bat

tles, they had little to fear with regard to the Corn Laws, however clamoured against. But now, they have to grapple with an enemy of a very different and most determined description:-even with a foe in their own household! This new assailant, invested with powers commensurate with the wants which it is commissioned to relieve, will march in with an overwhelming rapidity which will set at defiance every species of opposition, except that alone which will provide that Steam husbandry shall keep pace with Steam transport.

If this conclusion shall appear to any to be chimerical, let them consider the immense spirit of enterprise abroad just now as regards rail-roads; and then estimate what the introduction of Steam carriages will be when the millions of capital now proposed to be expended in laying down rails shall be laid out simply upon engines. Nor is this all-we have to add likewise the impulse which will be given to the substitution, when society, as a body, shall cease to view it in the mere light of its commercial importance. But when the whole of our starving classes shall come to regard the project as a mode of obtaining cheap bread. When the whole of the unemployed classes shall contemplate it as a mode of procuring abundant labour. When the whole of the manufacturing classes shall contemplate it as a mode of balancing, at home, consumption and production. And last, not least, when Government itself shall contemplate it as a mode of raising those resources which they can no longer obtain by taxation.

From the Parliamentary returns, the horses running in coaches in Great Britain in 1828, amounted to 178,841; and we are probably much within the mark when we suppose that these, with all other horses employed in drays and draught exclusively, amount to 600,000. It seems to be admitted that each horse consumes what will support eight individuals. The suppression therefore of these horses alone (which

does not include one horse employed in agriculture or for pleasure), will save what will feed 4,800,000 people. The annual consumption of grain by human mouths in Great Britain (viz. 16,000,000), is about 32,000,000 quarters, of which not onetwentieth part has during any year been imported. But the saving of what would feed, by the removal of the horses used for transit alone, 4,800,000 people amounts to more than what is consumed by the fourth part of the said population. If importation then of grain to the very limited extent of one-twentieth, viz. 1,600,000 quarters has hitherto been deemed an evil of no little magnitude by the agricultural interests, what will they consider a system which will abridge home consumption equal to one-fourth-viz. 9,600,000 quarters?

The farming interests may postpone the consideration of this subject; but their doing so, will not postpone the immediate application of Steam to transport. Let them bear this in mind-they will not repent of doing so. These calculations are not founded upon the mere ipse dixit of anonymous authority. They are taken from sources that have long been accredited by the public; and though they may nevertheless be widely inaccurate, they approach sufficiently near to the truth to render their rejection deeply disastrous to those for whose advantage they are offered.

It does not become us to suggest the practical steps by which this new danger may be avoided, but merely to point it out, and call upon the landed interests not to delay in preparing to meet it. It belongs to the Nobility, the Land-owners, and Agricultural Societies of England, to adopt the ways and means necessary to bring steam husbandry into immediate practice. The cheaper mode of cultivation which it will permit will enable them not only to withstand, but triumph over the substitution. In the second number of the Journal of Elemental Locomotion statements are offered which go far to

prove that the horses now used in husbandry alone are maintained at an expénditure of 30,000,000l. yearly; whilst it is calculated in the fifth number, that in ten years the profit in favour of a Steam Plough over a Horse Plough, will show a balance of 7751. making all allowances for the expenses incidental to the first introduction. It is not difficult to see how the substitution will effect a great cheapening of agricultural produce with remuneration to the growers; though to what extent this reduction will be made, can alone be decided by time and experience.

It is true that the same progress has not been made in steam machinery for purposes of cultivation as has been attained for conveyance. But it is also true, that this is the consequence, not of want of mechanical ingenuity, but of the lukewarmness with which the project has hitherto been regarded by agriculturists. The power of inanimate locomotion has been gained and it can be made to assume the requisite modification, the moment the necessary encouragement is afforded. Mr. Phillips' Getomic Apparatus, described in the fifth Journal, though by no means a perfect machine, is yet sufficient to shew that a little further ingenuity will make it such. It is however, one of the objects proposed by the Donation Fund of the INSTITUTION OF LOCOMOTION to offer a premium for a Steam Plough capable of being applied to practical purposes. But allowing that this should be a desideratum for some time to come, the expense of husbandry may even now be considerably cheapened by farmers getting partially rid of their horses, by using steam engines in their drags, reaping machines, thrashingmills, &c. Steam has been applied for some time past to the latter purpose in various parts of Scotland.

We know that there are many of opinion that this scheme of applying Steam to Agriculture is perfectly visionary. Many who consider a plough to be propelled by Steam just as probable an event as a plough to be

drawn by whales. Well! but what then? let them cling to their scepticism, it will at best only retard, not prevent, the substitution. Do the public forget, that ten years ago there was not an Engineer in England who did not hold it to be an axiom in mechanics,-that the periphery of a wheel had not sufficient bite upon the ground to render it an available fulcrum for the propulsion of a vehicle? It is not to the eminent in mechanical science that we are indebted for the solution of a problem, which is at once the mightiest and the most beneficial of inventions. No! he whose name is entitled, and yet destined, to receive the gratitude of his country and kind more than all they who have walked before him in the physical development of this mighty agent, is one whose apprenticeship was served in the chemist's hall, whose profession is the lancet! Did therefore the weightiest authority in that department, to which in especial such enquiries belong, state to us his conviction that Steam cultivation is wholly impracticable, we would value his dictum upon the matter no more than that of his milk-maid. We know what Steam has done, we know not what it may yet do. Let engineers beware how they stultify themselves further by limiting ingenuity. It is not temerity simply which, at such a crisis, shall stand in the way of a modification which is absolutely essential to the preservation of British Agriculture. Again, on the other hand, we have addressed ourselves upon this subject to many prominent individuals in the science of husbandry. If the names of Sinclair, Coke, and Blamire, &c. are not to be found in the list of its supporters,-nay, if even the proprietors of England, as a body, were to publish their resolution to take neither part nor lot in the matter,-still, what then? Would it cease to move onwards? No;-Dame Partington's attempt would not have been more abortive to mop back the ingress of the Atlantic Ocean!

We stand sufficiently behind the scenes to speak warmly upon this subject. We

do not forget, in the words of the Christian Advocate when recommending it to the support of the benevolent, that "the convulsions which our mercantile community has experienced within the last few years, seem to have produced a narrow-mindedness and selfishness amongst its wealthy members, which has reared a species of barrier betwixt capital and labour, until misery has been the consequence alike to the horder and the starver" *! Neither, that The Times, in the leading article upon the corn-law discussion, in May last, thus commented, "There never was dissatisfaction more generally expressed, by the town and country, than that which has been excited by the protecting duties on corn. How came the House of Commons to differ with the majority of their constituents on that important question? Was it that Honourable Members desired individually to propagate an eagerness for REVOLUTION?" And again, "The public murmurs at the indifference of Parliament, and of the upper ranks of Englishmen to the wants of their poorer brethren, have really grown to a frightful magnitude, and betoken SOME TRAGICAL RESULT!" Yes, the whirlwind of political opinions has swept over us, but the ground-swell of popular distress remains behind! We can subscribe-and we do it rather in sorrow than in indignation-to the justness of both these detractive accusations. We have already knocked at the doors of one half of the nobility of England, to give their support to this project, and we have knocked in vain. Not one English Peer has, as yet, vouchsafed it the furtherance either of his influence or his purse. Yet how exigent is the want which it is commissioned to alleviate, and how reckless in its consequences, that volcano indicates whose erruptions are nightly visible in the farmyards of every district of the country! +

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