"The purlieus of the Tuileries were the scene of indescribable tumult and confusion. Armed bands traversed the bridge and the quay. Shots fired in the air increased the intoxication of the victors. From the windows of the palace there issued, like the roar of the waves upon the beach, the hoarse voices of the mob. Cuirassiers' chargers, mounted by children, were galloping through the crowd. The people all had weapons; the soldiers only were unarmed. Groups of persons with curious, anxious, alarmed countenances, told each other the news; the royal family had fled, and of all the courtiers, all the councillors, all the men of war who surrounded them, not one had been found to draw a sword or flash a cartridge. M. Levrault was looking and listening with a stupified air, when a hand was laid upon his shoulder: turning quickly about, he found himself face to face with Jolibois. The Radical notary was armed to the teeth. In his girdle were two pair of holster pistols, a dragoon sabre dragged at his heels, a double-barrelled fowling-piece was on his shoulders. His face, begrimed with powder, might have belonged toa soldier who has done nothing all day but load and fire. But his innocent weapons were blood-guiltless; like a prudent warrior, he had waited till all was over before making his appearance on the scene of action. He was now marching upon the Chamber of Deputies, at the head of a score of men equipped like himself. On recognising him, M. Levrault was struck with consternation. "Well!" cried Jolibois, "what did I tell you? Who was right? You would not believe me; do you believe me now? I have a good nose; I smelt to-day's banquet long ago. The people triumph, the monarchy is down, the infamous bourgeoisie is dead. I and my men are off to the Chamber to proclaim the Republic."
"The Republic!" stammered M. Levrault in a stifled voice.
"Yes, my boy, the Republic! In an hour you shall have it." And taking him aside, as if fearful of being overheard by his followers: "Here you are in a nice mess, my good friend," he continued. "I would not be in your skin. A notary would not do for your son-in-law; you must needs have a marquis. Your millions were not enough to make you a mark for the anger, the justice of the people. Your hotel is a nest of Legitimists; to-night perhaps it will be a heap of ashes. Take warning, and get out of the scrape as you can."
Thereupon Jolibois broke away from M. Levrault, who clung to his garments, and hurried of to the Chamber. It were idle to attempt to depict M. Levrault's consternation and terror. The mere word "Republic" suffices to bewilder his brain and freeze his blood. In his dictionary, Republic signified fire, murder, and pillage. To these causes of alarm were to be added his wealth, his son-in-law, his connexion with the Legitimist party. Distracted, despairing like a drowning man, he fancied he heard his name murmured around him, and read threats and vengeance on every face. It seemed to him that the sum-total of his fortune and his son-in-law's title was inscribed on his hat. He dared not go home, for fear of being followed, but wandered to and fro, pale, trembling, and with haggard eyes, seeking a means of protecting his hotel from popular fury, when he saw a workman carried by upon a stretcher. A bright idea flashed across him. By a gesture he stopped the stretcher.
"Whither do you bear this brave fellow?" he asked in a loud voice.
"To the hospital."
"To the hospital? a child of the people, a hero who has shed his blood for liberty, for the Republic! To the hospital! It were a disgrace to us, my friends. Let him come home with me; my house belongs to him. I too am a workman. Let him come to William Levrault's. Follow me, comrades; rely upon it he shall want for nothing."
"Long live William Levrault," cried the mob, clapping their hands.
"My friends, cry Long live the Republic!"
And putting himself at the head of the procession, amidst uproarious cries of "Long live William Levrault! Long live the Republic!" he bravely took the road to his hotel.
The noise without had at last made itself heard in the apartment of the Hotel Levrault. The Marchioness and Laura were together in the drawing-room. Laura, uneasy, agitated, watched at the window for the arrival of her father or husband. The Marchioness was triumphant. In her eyes the events of the day could have but one signification, the return of the Count de Chambord. Thebourgeoisiewas put back to its place, the nobility resumed possession of their privileges. There was something providential in the catastrophe: Heaven would not suffer a Rochelandier to perjure himself. In her intoxication, the Marchioness pardoned Laura, and even M. Levrault; she forgot her resentment, and thought only of her approaching good fortune. She was about to resume at the Tuileries the position she occupied under the Restoration.
"Calm yourself, my dear daughter," said she, affectionately. "What do you fear? What do you lose? You wished to go to the Tuileries, we will go together; I will present you myself. What a difference between the court to which I will conduct you and that to which youwould have gone! In the palace of our young king you will not be exposed to meet intruders, people sprung none know whence. Do those who now depart merit a regret? What was that court? a mob. Only yesterday, the Tuileries was but an inn. A fine honour, truly, to frequent saloons through which everybody passes! To-morrow, Henry V. will clear the house and choose his own guests. Console yourself, my dear child; the young king has nothing to refuse to the La Rochelandiers."
Gaston entered the room. "Well! my son, we triumph!" proudly exclaimed the Marchioness.
"What do you hope then, madame?" Gaston gravely asked.
"We shall behold the child of our hopes; our dear Henry will ascend the throne of the Béarnais."
"But, mother, you know not then what is passing?"
"France utters a cry of deliverance, and extends its arms to its legitimate sovereign," continued the Marchioness with enthusiasm. "Why do you delay, my son? Is it not your duty to go and meet him? Depart; oh! that I could give you wings!"
"You are strangely mistaken," replied Gaston, shaking his head. "This is not the resurrection of the monarchy of St Louis, but the installation of the republic."
"The republic!" cried the Marchioness. "What an insane dream! It is impossible!"
"The republic!" exclaimed Laura: "then there will be no court?"
"Impossible!" repeated the Marchioness. "Reassure yourself, my daughter. You are mad, Gaston. The republic! How can you think of such a thing? France has tried it already, and knows too well what it is worth."
As she spoke the word, the door opened, and M. Levrault appeared, sustaining with his arm the faltering steps of the wounded workman, and followed by a dozen armed men who had escorted him to his hotel. Gaston, Laura, and the Marchioness beheld this strange scene with the utmost astonishment. The wounded man was about thirty years of age. Hurt in the shoulder with a musket-ball, his face, encircled with brown hair and a reddish beard, was still animated, in spite of pain, with all the ardour of the combat. It was one of those countenances characterised by a savage energy, which seem to rise out of the earth on the occasion of any popular movement.
"Bow your heads!" cried M. Levrault on entering—"salute with respect this hero who has given his blood to protect us from tyranny." Then, addressing himself to the wounded man; "My friend, you are at home, and your brave comrades shall not leave you. My friends, this house is yours. All that you here see I have earned with the sweat of my brow. I am too happy to share with you my little fortune, the modest fruit of my humble labours. Here is my son-in-law, a workman in the fields of thought, a republican like me, like yourselves.
"Say the Marquis de la Rochelandier," sternly interrupted Gaston. "Yesterday I held my title cheap; to-day that it is proscribed, I insist upon my right to it."
In vain did M. Levrault make signs to Gaston to hold his tongue; in a firm voice Gaston finished what he had to say, and left the room with haughty step, casting a look of pity on his father-in-law. The Marchioness, indignant, followed her son, and Laura was about to follow her when she was detained by a supplicatory gesture of her father's.
"A marquis!" said the wounded man, with a mistrustful glance round the room. "Comrades, I cannot stop here—take me to the hospital."
"My friends, you are in the house of William Levrault, formerly a weaver at Elbeuf. Do you know Jolibois? he is my dearest friend. I was on my way to the Chamber with him, when I met you. Here is my daughter, one of the people, a heart of gold. Here everything belongs to you. You have fought like lions; we must drink together."
Just then, the wounded man was seized with sudden faintness, and repeated, in a feeble voice—"Take me to the hospital!"
M. Levrault pulled the bell, a servant appeared, and soon afterwardsa hamper of wine. M. Levrault filled glasses round to his new friends, gave a full one to the wounded man, and exclaimed, in an agitated voice:
"Let us drink, my friends, to the strength and grandeur of our young republic. No more kings, no more nobility, no more middle classes! Let us drink to the levelling of all classes, that we may form but one family, a family of workmen. Each for all, and all for each!" And the glasses clashed together to cries of "Long live William Levrault!"
"Long live the people of Paris!" cried William Levrault, raising his glass.
"Friends," said the wounded man in a gloomy voice, after licking his mustaches, "beware! This is rich man's wine."
Notwithstanding this sinister warning, the democrats again filled their glasses, emptied them at a draught, and looked at each other with an air of incredulity. The wounded man fainted away. M. Levrault had him carried into a comfortable room, warmed his bed, and put him into it himself, sent for a surgeon to dress his wound, and put a wing of the hotel at the disposal of his new brothers, who needed little entreaty to install themselves there. On returning to the drawing-room, he found Laura pale and terrified.
"Wretched girl!" he cried, "see what your silly vanity has done! I wanted to marry you to Jolibois. You would be a Marchioness. And now God only knows what will become of us!"
Having said this, he crept stealthily down stairs, ran to the coach-house, painted over with his own hand the arms upon the carriages, stole up stairs again, took the plate boxes from the sideboard, hurried to the cellar, concealed his treasure in a cask, and went out to buy a few dozen forks and spoons of the best electro-plate.
We must hurry to a conclusion. Solon Marche-toujours (the name of the wounded man) is recognised, during his convalescence, as a son of M. Levrault, lost in his infancy, and to whom occasional reference has been made in the course of the novel. On discovering a rich father, he abjures communism, turns his comrades out of doors, and demands three hundred thousand francs to found a newspaper; but before he can extract them from the paternal purse, M. Levrault's entire fortune and Laura's dowry are swallowed up in one of the failures consequent on the revolution. Whereupon Solon reverts to his old principles, and finally emigrates to Icaria. The incident of the loss of the fortune, which, under ordinary circumstances, might seem forced, is rendered natural enough by the revolution, of which M. Sandeau has so ably availed himself. The moral of the tale is evident and good. All parties are punished where they have sinned. The political convulsion that abolishes the titles for which Levrault bartered his daughter, and Laura sold herself, sweeps away the money which the Marchioness lied and flattered, and Gaston misallied himself, to obtain. These four persons return to Brittany, the intriguing dowager being fain to accept M. Levrault's hospitality in what was once her own castle, but which she transferred to him in full expectation of appropriating in exchange his Parisian mansion. The cloth-merchant's tribulations are not yet at an end. He is arrested by Jolibois, who has been appointed commissioner of the Republic in Brittany. The Radical ex-notary, who has more mischief than malignity in his composition, relents and releases him, abandoning him on a desolate road in the middle of a stormy night, and at several miles distance from Chateau Levrault. There are some humorous scenes towards the end of the book; and hard knocks, richly deserved, are administered to the democrats. The most pleasing feature at the close of the narrative is the change that takes place in Gaston and his young wife, whose better qualities, dormant in their more prosperous days, are brought about by adversity, and who find compensation in mutual affection for loss of rank and wealth. The novel closes with their departure for Paris, where Gaston is resolved to work out, by toil and the exercise of his talents, the means of an honourableand independent existence. M. Levrault and the Marchioness remain in Brittany, where they beguile their weariness by keeping up their old feud. Jolibois, after sitting in the Constituent Assembly, subsides into private life, having in the meantime lost all his clients. Gaspard de Montflanquin, released from durance vile by the abolition of imprisonment for debt, and appointed consul to the Republic in Polynesia, passes his time teaching lansquenet to the savages.
Sacs et Parcheminsis one of the best French novels that has appeared since the February revolution. Its tone and tendency are alike unobjectionable; and whatever its reception in France, we are quite sure that with English readers it will be a general favourite. It is fully time that the better class of French writers should exert themselves, and not suffer their novel reading countrymen to be reduced, for an idle hour's amusement, to the perusal of the contemptible and unwholesome trash of which the light literature of France has for the last two years principally consisted. It would be most agreeable and refreshing to behold the names of Foudras, Féval, Dumas junior, Montégrin, and all vain pretenders of the same sort, replaced in the catalogues by those of de Bernard, Reybaud, Mérimée, Karr, and others of whom we have occasionally made honourable mention. In the ranks of the latter and worthier body, M. Jules Sandeau's last novel fairly entitles him to a place.
"Tarry woo', O tarry woo',Tarry woo' is ill to spin;Caird it weel, O caird it weel,Caird it weel ere ye begin."Old National Song.
"Tarry woo', O tarry woo',Tarry woo' is ill to spin;Caird it weel, O caird it weel,Caird it weel ere ye begin."Old National Song.
"Tarry woo', O tarry woo',Tarry woo' is ill to spin;Caird it weel, O caird it weel,Caird it weel ere ye begin."Old National Song.
[With reference to the following friendly letter from Cato the Censor to Mr Caird, we must explain to our readers that the author ofHigh Farming under Liberal Covenants, &c., has published a second pamphlet, entitledHigh Farming Vindicated, being a letter addressed to us, and professing to answer the article in our January number, on "British Agriculture and Foreign Competition." Mr Caird is a clever fellow in his way, but hardly the style of man to whom, under ordinary circumstances, we should feel called upon to devote so many of our pages. We shall therefore briefly explain our reasons for publishing the old Roman's letter in our columns.
We were aware that the gentlemen who, in a manly straightforward way, gave us the privilege of publishing their names as drawing up and attesting facts consistent with their knowledge and experience of agriculture, might be exposed to impertinence and cavil, and we were resolved to punish any assailant in the slightest degree worthy of notice. These witnesses of ours were selected by us from their high reputations as farmers, and in very few instances were we acquainted with their opinions, political or other. We appealed to them as the highest court of authority that we could find in matters agricultural; and since their names were published, what we have heard from others confirms us in our estimate of them. There are farmers as good as they; but the history of farming in Scotland, for the last thirty years, proves that they stand second to none in their profession; and it is most absurd and indiscreet in any man to rush into print, proclaiming that they are behind the age; ignorant, it would seem, of the uses of oilcake and guano. Mr Caird has done this, and must therefore undergo condign punishment. The fortuitous importance of Mr Caird lies in the circumstance that his mode of stating an exceptional case in farming has been seized hold of by the whole troop of enemies to British agricultural industry, as a handle for insult to his brother farmers, and a specimen of what might be effected throughout the country under the blessings of Free Trade. We do not think that Mr Caird even dreamed of this when he wrote his first pamphlet; on the contrary, we feel satisfied that his intentions were good. In our January paper we were purposely tender to him—most unwilling to say anything that might hurt his feelings—and it was only the clatter that had been made about his pamphlet, that induced us to mention him at all. Our excellent and kind-hearted friend Mr Stephens at first declined to come forward personally, and expose the fallacy of the Auchness system of husbandry, and only did so when we explained our reasons for thinking that it ought to be done. We are greatly surprised at the unbecoming tone of Mr Caird's remarks about Mr Stephens, and did not suppose that any man at all acquainted with Scottish agriculture would have presumed so to speak of the author of theBook of the Farm.
When we saw "Donald Caird come again," in the shape of a vindication from an imaginary attack, we felt much pained that he had forced himself upon us. He does not attack us directly, but—what is much more unpardonable in our eyes—he attacks and foolishly sneers at the gentlemen who furnished us with undeniable facts, none of whom, with the exception of Mr Stephens, ever mentioned his name, or were thinking of him at all.
We have still a regard for the yeoman of Baldoon, as there are many good points about him. He possesses capital pluck; and had the right honourable Baronet, who has made a cat's-paw of him, been gifted with half as much of the same excellent quality, the Corn Laws would never have been repealed. Will he take a suggestion at our hands, to beware lest boldness degenerate into temerity?
Without further preamble, we leave him in the hands of that austere veteran,Cato the Censor, author ofDe Re Rusticâ, &c., who has kindly come forward to protect us. We recently had one of the Censor's family, "Porcius," analysing with playful irony the pigs and ammonia of the amiable Rector of Saffron-Waldon, Mr Huxtable. Those acquainted with the treatiseDe Re Rusticâwill be delighted to see that the aged head of the Gens Porcia is still writing with undiminished vigour.]
Cato the CensortoMr James Caird.
Columella Lodge,March 1850.
Sir,—I need not tell you that I have always taken a deep interest in your prosperity and welfare, and have watched your progress onwards to your present elevation. Not without trembling anxiety did I hear of the publication of your first pamphlet. Many a man has been spoiled by attempting literature; and I have known one or two whose whole future lives were rendered useless by the mere fact of their having indited a pamphlet. However, the perusal of yourHigh Farming under Liberal Covenants, the Best Substitute for Protection, somewhat quieted my fears. The thing was plausibly done; and I had a hope that nothing very calamitous would come out of it. I supposed it possible, even, that the pawky compliment so adroitly ministered to Sir R. Peel in the opening paragraph of your essay, and repeated yet more adroitly in the peroration, might not be without its fruits. If the doctor, in this age of political quackery, ever recovered the premiership, I was hopeful that he would remember you. This was no doubt what you intended, and it was praiseworthy. But oh, my dear sir, what poignant and unfeigned pain have I experienced in perusing your second agricultural essay, which you entitleHigh Farming Vindicated, and further Illustrated! The tone and execution of this performance is all bad. It is written in bad temper. It is brimful of an over-weening vanity. After an exordium sufficiently egotistical, it affects to be a reply to "the Editor ofBlackwood." You fly at high game. Your vanity surely cannot go the length of fancying that the veiled Editor of Ebony will step out of Buchanan Lodge to answer your summons in person. It is possible, but not probable, that he may devote a little bit of margin to you, and enshrine you in a foot-note, like a fly in amber. Such immortality may be your inheritance—I hope not. You are scarcely the kind of Dalgetty whom he would take the trouble of engaging either as an opponent or a retainer; and it is this conviction which moves me, in the present instance, to address you. You require advice; and although it is very much against the grain with me to take up the pen, yet, out of my regard for you, and for those that went before you, I am constrained to address you on the topics touched upon in yourHigh Farming Vindicated, and further Illustrated. Be thankful, my dear sir, that the operator is not the Editor ofBlackwood. I will handle you tenderly, and, if the cautery is indispensable, will remember the quaint and gentle old Izaak's instruction to the angler, when directing him how to fix the frog on the hook—"In so doing, use him as though you loved him."
There are some delusions under which you are labouring, that I must, in the first instance, set myself to remove. In your introductory paragraph, you express your astonishment that your first pamphlet, of some thirty pages, should have formed the subject of so much discussion, and have originated violent controversies, and been productive, to use your own awkwardly-rustic metaphor, of "a whole sheaf of pamphlets," (p. 3-4.)
Well, I wonder too: but it is not the first time that dire events have sprung from trivial causes; and you seem strangely blind to the real origin of the popularity that attended your first essay. In yourHigh Farming Vindicated, you describe its predecessor as "chiefly a narrative of the system pursued by a practical farmer in your neighbourhood, which that gentleman had found highly remunerative." Had this been all, thebrochurewould have attracted little notice, and caused no discussion. But this is not a correct account of its object and scope. The titlepage—High Farming under Liberal Covenants,the best Substitute for Protection—is a true exponent of the object of the author. The very titlepage acted like magic. For mark at the moment when you launched your bantling into the world. The agricultural depression was grievous; prices were sinking daily; the farmers saw their capital disappearing, and ruin apparently staring them in the face; and, in the emergency, you step forward, and offer them an infallible panacea in yourHigh Farming the best Substitute for Protection. There never was anything so opportune. The suffering farmers flew to you, read you greedily, and arose from the perusal angry that they were so trifled with, and with a conviction that yourHigh Farmingas a substitute for protection, and a cure for their sufferings, was a mere quackish nostrum.
But this was not all. There was another numerous class, alsoin extremis, for whom you had good news—I mean the free-trade press and the free-trade proprietors. This powerful but distressed community hailed your appearance, and hugged you to their bosoms. They were beginning to see that all their predictions regarding the effects of Free Trade on the agricultural interest were to be falsified; one moiety of them feared that their rents would topple; and at the critical moment you advertiseHigh Farming a Substitute for Protection. You were a perfect godsend to the Free-traders; and for them it is undeniable you chiefly wrote, and not for the behoof of your brother farmers. If that had been your object, you never could have commenced with comparing the Scotch farmer to a melancholious cripple, nor have talked of the "prejudices" of those who have been bred to the agricultural profession. Indeed, an under-current of foolish sneering at your brethren pervaded your first pamphlet, which, in yourHigh Farming Vindicated, has come to the surface, and rushes along in a head-long and angry torrent. The result has proved the correctness of this view. The free-trade press are playing you off against your fellow-farmers, and bespattering you with praise. Sir R. Peel has patted you on the back, and deluded you into a roving commission; and the free-trade proprietors, catching your note, are denouncing the farmers for want of enterprise, skill, and capital. To you your brother farmers are indebted for these free-trade compliments. I hope, then, that you will hereafter understand the real cause of the discussions that followed the publication of your first lucubration. The tempting title you gave your thesis, and the solace you offered the farmers, and the pleasant prescription you presented to panic-struck free-trade lairds, and the seasonable moment you selected for publication, sufficiently explain your popularity. The little urchin that throws a spark amongst gunpowder causes smoke and an explosion; and yet there may have been nothing singularly meritorious in his performance. Your lucifer-match fell among combustible materials, and had it not been so, it would have proved noiseless and innocuous. I am anxious to expound the true origin of the noise you have made. It is painful to me to notice the extent of your hallucination. You are quite inflated with the idea of being famous; and it will be real kindness to puncture you, were it only to let the wind out. The "hoven" in cattle, when at its height, can only be cured by acupuncturation.
You say that, fromBlackwood'sstatistics, "it appears that an impression has been created on the south side of the Border, that the agriculture of Scotland has long been in a decaying condition; and it is as much to vindicate the credit of his country from an aspersion on its agriculture, as to support the views which he formerly promulgated, that the writer takes this mode of replying," (p. 5.) That the Southrons should infer fromBlackwood'sstatistics that the agriculture of Scotland is on the decline, seems incredible. Sir R. Peel leads us to infer that his tenants only grow from 18 to 20 bushels per acre. Mr Huxtable's hypothetical mark, arrived at by the use of no one knows how much ammonia, is 32 bushels per acre. As a sample ofBlackwood'sstatistics, take Mr Dudgeon's. He grows,on an average of years, 33 bushels wheat per acre, 40 bushels barley, 48 bushels oats. Could the Tamworth baronettake this as a proof of decaying husbandry? As an average produce for a series of years, on a farm of 500 acres "of useful land," would Mr Huxtable himself think this evidence of an agricultural decline? But how are the Auchness statistics to dispel the gloomy impression regarding the moribund state of agriculture in North Britain, which, you say, has been created byBlackwood'sstatistics? On comparing the detailed account of annual produce of Auchness, in the fifth edition of your first pamphlet, with the number of acres under crop, as given in p. 15, we find that Mr M'Culloch grows 36 bushels wheat per acre, and 45 bushels oats: that is, the Auchness factor grows 3 bushels wheat more per acre than Mr Dudgeon, and Mr Dudgeon grows 3 bushels oats more per acre than the factor. This is the mighty difference. How is it possible, then, that the Auchness statistics can counteract the evil impression made on John Bull's mind byBlackwood'sstatistics? At Auchness, indeed, you can present John with a watery potato; but to a man in low spirits, as John is about Scotland, that would only increase his flatulence. As for a drop of malt, the thing is unknown at Auchness, barley being an extinct cereal there; and if a horn of wholesome home-brewed can clear off from John's mind the ugly impression, and give him brighter views of Scottish agriculture, he must go to Mr Dudgeon for that.
And yet you are the man who are to "vindicate the credit of your country!" When I read this, I laughed aloud. Poor old Scotland! I saw her reviled and misrepresented byBlackwood'stroop of statists, and her agriculture exhibited as in adwiningcondition. And I saw you, fire in your eye, and in "your nostril beautiful disdain," sallying forth, armedcap-à-pie, a devoted and gallant chevalier, to do vengeance on the enemies of your native land. And methought I heard you exclaim in a heroical ecstasy—"I will vindicate the credit of my country!" My dear sir, you may be ambitious to live in Caledonian story as the champion of Scotland; but it is more probable that you may be only recollected as the Don Quixotte of Baldoon. Dr Johnson tells us of a patriotic butcher, who was haunted with the idea that his country was on its last legs, and whose continual exclamation was—"My heart bleeds for my country!" 'Tis said that the butcher grew fat, and the country yet exists.
Blackwood'sstatistics were expressly put forward as embodying the average produce for a term of years of the average soil in the different districts selected for illustration, and farmed according to the best modes. Extraordinary and exceptional produce and profits were properly avoided, as well as extraordinary failures or losses in crops; and surely the average was high enough, if we may infer anything from the reports of theTimes'own commissioner, to convince our friends on the south side of the Border that our agriculture was not absolutely in a decaying condition; and therefore I am constrained to believe that you are misinformed regarding this "impression." And even if it were otherwise, and, supposing thatBlackwoodhad injured your country, should you not have modestly asked whether you were the man fit to avenge your country's wrongs? There is another most singular delusion in which you seem to be immersed. You fancy that the surpassingly able and striking article inBlackwood, which has excited a deeper and more general sensation in the kingdom than perhaps any article that ever appeared in any British periodical, has been got up solely and exclusively for the purpose of refuting and overthrowing your pamphlet! "And finally, the Editor ofBlackwood's Magazine, backed by the whole influence of the Protectionist party in Scotland, has brought up a heavy troop of yeomanry to extinguish the opinions I advanced, by an overwhelming exhibition of authority. Acknowledging the compliment implied in the necessity for this array, I think my readers will now feel that it is not the advocate, but the cause, which is inextinguishable," (p. 30.) The whole Protectionist party, you fancy, have entered into a wicked league to expose you! Nor is this all. Plainly, your idea is that the Editor ofBlackwood, and his learned ally, the author ofThe Book of the Farm, were afraid to encounter you; and, conscious of their weakness, that they summoned to their assistance Messrs Watson, Dudgeon, Gibson, and the thirty agriculturists who certiorate their statements. What a host!—gathered together from the south and north, and east and west, all marshalled in warlike array, to put down Mr James Caird, farmer, Baldoon! Was there ever such a hallucination? or did human vanity ever take such a flight before? You think it proved, by the mustered troops that have been brought to bear upon you, that it is not the advocate but the cause which is inextinguishable. The cause, doubtless, is as inextinguishable as the Auchness potatoes. But who ever dreamed of the advocate as being indestructible? I never heard of you as the inextinguishable Mr Caird—the unconsumable Phœnix of the West. You are very distinguished, but not inextinguishable. Oh! dismiss the vain fancy, or intolerable ridicule will dog you all the days of your life. Can a man not write on British agriculture, and illustrate the depression of agricultural produce flowing from the invasion of Free Trade, without having Mr Caird in his eye? Or if I utter the words "high farming," must you instantly prick up your ears, and ask me snappishly, "Do you bite your thumb at me?" The idea of high farming being the substitute for protection was your own—but you neither invented, nor do you practise, the Auchness modes of husbandry. You were not the discoverer of the Auchness wonders; you were the cicerone, the mere narrator of them. You were not the man that caught the lion, but the gentleman with the long pole who describes to the gapinggobemouchesthe qualities of the king of the beasts. Johnson had his Boswell, Addison his Tom Tickell, and Robinson Crusoe his man Friday; and there seems no reason why Mr M'Culloch should not have his Caird. But you quite over-estimate the importance of your position.Blackwoodspoke of you with a studied gentleness, as if unwilling to hurt your feelings; andBlackwood'sfarmers make not the remotest reference to you,and never once mention your name. And yet, in yourHigh Farming Vindicated, you pour out on these gentlemen an inky flood of petulant impertinence. You speak of their statistics as "counter-statements" (p. 7.) to yours. Your vanity makes you think so. They never once allude to you; and if the article inBlackwoodbrought them to bear on the high farming theory, it might surely be the high farming of Mechi or Huxtable, as well as of Caird.
There is yet another kindred delusion to the preceding, which you are fondly cherishing. You evidently fancy yourself a martyr! "I have often," you say, "both in public and private, been attacked for my advocacy of the cause of my brother tenants. I have been upbraided, and have suffered in the estimation of men of rank, for doing so. An interested portion of the press have distorted my arguments, to prove to their readers that I am an enemy to the farmer," (p. 30.) Oh, unhappy man! Your immortal labours unappreciated—your words distorted—your character attacked, and, to consummate your sufferings—your reputation injured in the estimation of men of rank! From the bottom of my heart, I pity you. You have been a very ill-used man. But let us be calm, and inquire into the cause of your persecution. You see, my dear sir, in the opening sentence of your first pamphlet, you personified your brother farmers under the image of a poor hypochondriac cripple, the victim of imaginary ailments; and you afterwards insinuated that the agriculturists of the country, who had been trained and bred up to their profession, were cropful of "prejudices:" that the gentleman who so wrote might be an "enemy to the farmer," was a natural enough mistake for people to fall into. Moreover, your representation of high farming as the substitute for Protection, and as sufficient to uphold the tottering rent-rolls under the regime of Free Trade, must have been considered insidious and dangerous doctrine, in the estimation of all those who looked upon the Auchness crutch as rotten and treacherous timber, and us calculated to injure tenants by ministering delusive expectations to the landlords. Have not the Free-tradenewspapers, "the interested portion of the press," made this very use of your arguments, and are not Free-trade proprietors acting upon it? On this ground have you not proved an enemy to the farmer, and are those greatly to blame who think so?
But, indeed, although it be, I would not have you too deeply to distress yourself; although you have proved, unwittingly perhaps, an enemy to the farmer, it is not certain that your brother tenants will suffer irremediable ruin from the productions of your pen. Consider that the assaults of such an enemy British farmers may possibly withstand. To have forfeited the good opinion of your brother farmers is very unfortunate, but to have lost the approving smiles of men of rank is a sorer evil still. You seem utterly destitute and forsaken, and my sympathetic nature prompts me, therefore, to suggest to you another source of comfort. Remember that all really great men have been persecuted. Such is the way of this wicked world. Milton fell "on evil days and evil tongues," and yet his Tetrachordon "walked the town awhile numbering good intellects;" and most heartily did the "old man eloquent" denounce "the asses, apes, and dogs," that with barbarous noise environed him. This is your very case. The parallel is complete. Galileo, a great discoverer, although in a different department from yours, had his arguments distorted by an interested priest, and twice suffered the tortures of the Inquisition. You may be the agricultural Galileo of the nineteenth century. It may be that, like all men of genius, you are only before the age. In your present persecutions you may be only paying the penalty of your genius, and what the greatest benefactors of the human race have ever had to endure. Posterity will be more just, and give you your award when the ephemeralBlackwoodshall have perished and been forgotten. In the distant future you will be famous: consider this, and be no longer inconsolable.
What reason have you for saying, (p. 4,) that the Protectionists employed the leading organ of their party in North Britain to write down this system? Does not the insinuation indicate a pitiful misrepresentation on your part, or an extraordinary ignorance? HasBlackwoodproved himself venal? have the writers of that periodical indicated mercenary tendencies? At the era of the late memorable tergiversation, which inflicted such a disgraceful wound on the political morality of our nation, didBlackwoodtrim and temporise? On the contrary, did he not maintain his integrity, and nail his colours to the mast, and fight the battle which he had always fought? Are not the views and opinions advocated in the article to which you refer, the very views and opinions whichBlackwood, with unswerving consistency, has always maintained? All the world knew this to be the fact, and what necessity was there for the Protectionists "employing" the leading organ to do what it had always done, and would infallibly continue to do?
But worse, and more unwarrantable, if possible, are your reflections on the character of the gentlemen who furnishedBlackwoodwith his agricultural statistics. "The farmers ofBlackwoodare content to be held up, for a political purpose, in an aspect discreditable to the national character as Scottish agriculturists," (p. 21.) You describe these gentlemen as venal subservient tools, ready to do a discreditable job for a political purpose. I must be permitted to tell you that this is a false and childish calumny. Many of these parties I know, and they are incapable of such baseness. More honourable or independent men are not in the kingdom, and that they should sell themselves to serve a purpose is a charge sufficiently malignant, but too absurd to meet with credence. What unprincipled purpose could their statistics serve? Their statistics seemed to class them with the political minority in Parliament at least. This did not indicate selfishness: commissioner-ships they were not courting. Some of them might be opposing the Free-trade theories of their proprietors: this does not look like servile meanness. You must have known that, on the question of politics generally, these farmers did not all agree withBlackwood; that on many points they differ with one another, and that yetthey unite in testifying to the disastrous effects of Free Trade on the agriculture of the nation. The evidence of their integrity and conscientiousness is irresistible, and it has been felt to be so. And yet here are you, with foolish recklessness, insinuating that about thirty of the best known, most eminent, and best-informed agriculturists in the kingdom, who never once mentioned your name, are capable of conduct mean and dishonourable, and content to be held up for a political purpose. If your gratuitous and unprovoked accusation should lower you henceforth in the estimation of the tenant-farmers of your native land, you have yourself alone to blame. It has ever been reckoned the proof of meanness, and the evidence of quackery, in any member of a profession to revile his brethren, and to disparage the well-won reputation of its most distinguished members. In this unenviable position you have placed yourself. The native insignificance of the accuser renders his accusation harmless, but it cannot shield him from the consequences of his rash and presumptuous folly.
I am sorry to write with such severity—but, indeed, I confess that I have felt deep indignation that some of the most respected and distinguished agriculturists of the kingdom should have been insulted by such anovus homoas you are. I can scarcely trust myself to speak of the manner in which you have written of Professor Low and Mr Stephens. There are no two authors in the kingdom who have contributed more largely to advance the cause of agriculture, both as a science and an art, than these two gentlemen have done by their writings. They are universally respected. And yet you write of them with a puerile and vulgar rudeness, discreditable at once to your feelings as a gentleman, and to your position as a farmer. Your plucking out solitary expressions from Professor Low'sAppeal to the Common Sense of the Country, and attaching a meaning to them which, in their original position, they did not bear, is sufficiently unscrupulous, and marks your candour as a controversialist. I believe nothing in your pamphlet has excited deeper disapprobation than the manner in which you have presumed to speak of Mr Stephens.
You entitle your last pamphletHigh Farming Vindicated. High farming vindicated against the attacks of whom? A vindication presupposes an assault, and injury inflicted. By your titlepage, you affect to insinuate that high farming has been depreciated. In the name of the tenant-farmers of Scotland, I repel the insinuation. If by high farming you mean good farming, (that is, a liberal treatment of the soil and of stock, and an earnest application of the discoveries of science to the practice of husbandry,) I believe there never was a time when agriculturists were more alive to the advantages of high farming, or more desirous of adopting it, as far as their circumstances will allow. You seem foolishly to fancy that there is no high farming, saving at Auchness; and because the system there, as exhibited by you, has been subjected to some criticism, you rush to its defence, as if high farming were in the abstract attacked; and you indite a pamphlet, presumptuously entitling itHigh Farming Vindicated!
You set forth the Auchness system as the substitute for Protection. That crude and undigested fancy you appear to have been compelled to relinquish. But, indeed, there are specialties at Auchness which must ever render the system there incapable of being generally adopted. Not to speak of the enormous additional capital required by landlords and tenants—not to mention the liberal covenant and the low rent—there are the five hundred cartloads of sea-weed for manure; there is the memorable moss, not only fertile itself, but the cause of fertility to the adjacent fields, and benevolently submitting to transportation for the good of the commonwealth; there is the capricious potato, exciting suspicion and entailing loss everywhere else, but pouring immense treasures into the Auchness coffers; there is the proximity (two miles) to a seaport, "where produce can be shipped for Glasgow or Liverpool, and manure, &c., imported," (first pamphlet, page 8;) there is the fine climate, so favourable to the culture of green crops, and permitting wheatto be sown almost at any time during the winter months: these advantages, not one of which is enjoyed by Messrs Watson and Dudgeon, and which, in combination, I venture to affirm, do not exist on any other farm in the kingdom, must entirely prevent the general adoption of the Auchness model. The whole of your speculation on this subject is visionary, and the slightest reflection should have convinced you of this, as it has convinced every one else.
Let us, however, now look at your vindication ofHigh Farming. "Any one," you say, "who has read my pamphlet without prejudice will have seen thatmutual co-operation between landlord and tenant, with sufficient capital and skill, encouraged in their application by moderate rents and liberal covenants, are the points urged by me as indispensably requisite to insure success under reduced prices. I illustrated these positions by the admirable practice of my friend Mr M'Culloch," (p. 6.) Now the truth is, that, in your first pamphlet, you said very little about the liberal covenant. The "liberal covenant" was a subsidiary part of your titlepage; and to this branch of your subject you only devoted a very few unsatisfactory sentences in your pamphlet. You illustrated the successful application of sufficient capital and skill by the practice of Mr M'Culloch—but not certainly the liberal covenant and the moderate rent, which were the boons of the proprietor. For the benefit of the tenant-farmers, you have more fully illustrated the subject of the liberal covenant in yourHigh Farming Vindicated. On this subject you now deliver yourself with great enthusiasm. The following "impediments" to the more general adoption of liberal covenants you require to be removed,—(1) The law of entail must be abrogated or altered. (2) The tenant must have a legal right, at the close of his lease, to repayment for unexhausted manures. (3) The tenant must be released from paying a full rent, in a season where his potatoes are tainted, or his stock decimated. (4) The law of hypothec, which promotes a fictitious competition for land, must be repealed, (p. 22.) And you proceed to write as follows—"Some of these have been pointed at by a body of intelligent farmers who met sometime ago at Glasgow, and who further suggest that every tenant should be entitled to have his rent commuted into grain, (5)at the average priceswhich prevailed when he entered on his farm; giving the landlord a right (if the tenant claims commutation) to take up the farm if he pleases, on paying the tenant for his actual improvements." Here, then, five acts of Parliament, or one very comprehensive measure, seems indispensable to facilitate the adoption of liberal covenants, and to render justice to the farmer under the reduced prices. A code of new legislation is called for, whereby the present rights of landowners are to be subverted and altered, and whereby important advantages are to be communicated to tenants—and who, besides, must have unlimited powers to crop or miscrop their farms as they see fit—and all for the purpose of insuring the adoption of the Auchness liberal covenant! Of course, the new agricultural code must have a retrospective effect, not only by nullifying all existing leases, but by granting compensation for unexhausted improvements—not at their present deteriorated value, but at the value which they would have been worth had the measures of the Legislature not diminished the profits of agricultural investment. A more revolutionary change, a more sweeping reform of the law of landlord and tenant, I do not think was ever mooted.
The measures proposed I do not at present mean to consider; I notice just now the immensity of the change—"These, I would say to my brother farmers, these are practical questions, which have a direct bearing on the condition of tenants, and are worthy of our attentive consideration. Happily, they have not yet been appropriated by any political party." These questions certainly have a direct bearing on the condition of tenants; but it humbly appears to me that they havea more direct bearing onlandlords, andare well worthy of their very attentive consideration. These questions have not been appropriated by any political party, and I fear will not soon be. It is an appropriationwhich I believe the Free-Trade legislators of Parliament, who own landed property, will most religiously shun. It would seem that there is nothing for it, but that you should enter Parliament yourself, and plead the cause of the liberal covenant. Parliamentary enactments, even to the extent indicated, will not secure all the conditions of the liberal covenant. The enlarged and improved farm-buildings are not provided for in any of the above measures, and yet without these, for the object in view, the liberal covenant is wholly abortive and incomplete. But you tell Messrs Watson and Dudgeon "that there is nothing to prevent them,with the assistance of their landlords, to have equal accommodation for their stock and their manure," (p. 13.) You make no doubt of the assistance of the landlords. On this subject you speak with a prompt and easy assurance. But that assistance may not be given. I have not heard of one proprietor tendering the Auchness covenant. Not without reason, the proprietor may refuse. In this case, you will allow that another act of Parliament becomes requisite, to render it compulsory upon landlords to rebuild or remodel and enlarge farm-buildings, so as that the necessary accommodation of the liberal covenant may be secured. We begin now to see some of the conditions of the liberal covenant, and to understand the extent of legislation requisite to pave the way for its adoption. You tell us, in large letters, that the liberal covenant is to the farmer an element "indispensably requisite, to insure success under reduced prices." High farming by itself won't do; and you justly contend that the several conditions prescribed by you must be fulfilled, before it can be proved that your remedy has failed, (p. 7.) Be it so. But you know that your liberal covenant at present is a nonentity—that it exists nowhere but at Auchness, and perhaps one or two other favoured localities. Nay, you seem to allow that absolutely it cannot, and will not, be got without the intervention of Parliament. In that I believe you to be right. And, of course, until it is got, upon your own principles the farmers of the kingdom are not to be blamed for not practising the high farming of Auchness. In their present position, you dare not even recommend that to them, your several conditions not being granted—a circumstance which would prove utterly destructive to the profits of the Auchness mode.
But will Parliament legislate to the extent and in the way necessary? Some half-dozen of statutes, would be required; a mass of legislation on interests supremely delicate, vastly momentous, and infinitely extensive in their bearings on, the structure and welfare of society. The boldest legislator might well boggle at the extent of your demand for Parliamentary interference. Protection may be anignis fatuus, but your demands on Parliament are inconceivably more fantastic, visionary, and chimerical. You do not seem to be aware that your copious exposition of the liberal covenant, as now given, nullifies any useful or practical lesson that could have been drawn from your first pamphlet on high farming asthe substitutefor protection. Your two essays are antagonistic, and destructive of each other. You have chalked out as much work for Parliament as would fully occupy the House of Commons for three or four years, at the rate at which business is now carried on in our national assembly. In the mean time, and until the liberal covenant is got, what is to be done? With admirable coolness, you look forward to the time when "some legislation or conventional provision" for unexhausted improvements will come to the farmer's relief. The farmers of the nation are suffering deeply; their capital is rapidly vanishing: with three years of the present prices, rents, and leases, the majority of them will be ruined. And you look forward to the remote future, when the possible legislation of Parliament, or some conventional arrangements enacted by some little college of agriculturists that may meet at Glasgow, will cure the evil. Was there ever such trifling with one of the gravest questions that ever engaged the attention of men? and was there ever such mockery of your brother farmers, in the suffering and perilous position in whichParliamentary treachery has placed them?
Admitting to its fullest extent the efficacy of high farming, it was evident, from your first pamphlet, that the Auchness husbandry could not be reduced to practice, from, amongst other causes, the lack of the immense additional capital required both by landlords and tenants; and it only remained for you to give some clear notions of the liberal covenant, and to show how unobtainable it was, which you have now done in your second pamphlet, to consummate the impracticable, visionary, and utopian character of your whole theory. The Free-trade proprietor was delighted with your first pamphlet, and hawked it about amongst his tenants. He hung with rapture over its high farming. It was acceptable to him as provision to a besieged and starving city. But he has been rudely shocked by your late lecture on the liberal covenant. He is appalled at the extent and multiplicity of your demands, and he has dismissed you from his counsels as a most dangerous and revolutionary practitioner. The farmer approves of some of the provisions of your liberal covenant, as fair and equitable; but he sees very well that, before your prescriptions can be compounded, and procured, and administered, the poor patient will expire.
Before inquiring whether the liberal covenant, in conjunction with the Auchness husbandry, will meet the emergency, we must look a little at your further illustrations of high farming. You seem, now, not so very confident of the propriety and prudence of devoting such a disproportionate extent to the culture of potatoes. It is notorious that the potato has been for many years the most uncertain and precarious of all crops; that again and again, in all kinds of soil, and under all kinds of treatment, it has utterly perished in the earth, and entailed a grievous loss upon the farmer. Accordingly, the cultivation of it was very properly all but abandoned; and it only now is being resumed upon a limited scale, and with the caution that reiterated and dear-bought experience inculcates upon all but inveterate and incurable speculators. While, then, in reference to the potato, such was the feeling and practice of the whole body of British agriculturists, flowing from an experience irresistibly cogent, and founded on the dictates of the commonest prudence, we find Mr M'Culloch, on a farm of 260 acres, devoting 60 acres in 1848, and 92 acres in 1849, to the cultivation of potatoes. There never was such a purely gambling speculation in agriculture! The experiment was condemned by all but universal experience. No calculation of probabilities warranted the trial; and prudence repudiated the attempt. Nevertheless, the factor at Auchness bravely runs the risk, and stakes his £1200 upon the throw. The capricious root finds some peculiar virtue in the antiseptic moss of Auchness, to be found in no other soil, and flourishes in all its pristine vigour. The factor adventures again and again, and fortune smiles upon him. Well, then, what is to be said? Why, merely that Mr M'Culloch is a lucky fellow. That is all. He had potatoes untainted when there were few in the land, and he got the high price for them which scarcity caused. Here is the source of his profits. Had he lost his potato crop this season, as in past seasons thousands have done, instead of being a theoretical gainer by the farm of Auchness to the extent of £718, 6s., he would have been a practical loser to the extent of £481, 14s. In 1848, had the potatoes failed, there would have been a loss of £419. What then, in this department, are the merits of the Auchness system? Did Mr M'Culloch grow more potatoes per acre than Messrs Watson and Dudgeon did, when nature permitted them to grow them? Quite the reverse. Mr M'Culloch had no merit, unless a perilous love of speculation be meritorious, or the fortunate accident of holding a large extent of moss, of unparalleled potato-growing virtue. Is it a proof of want of skill and enterprise in Messrs Watson and Dudgeon, and Scottish farmers, that they do not happen to possess such precious moss? or is Scottish agriculture to assume generally the character of an immense gambling speculation? Unlessthis doctrine is meant to be inculcated, it is worse than idle to hold up the high farming of Auchness as a model, and it is ridiculous in the last degree to speak of it as a substitute for Protection. Relinquish the potatoes, as other farmers have been obliged to do, and the Auchness profits are obliterated.
Blackwood, in his January number, (p. 106,) says that he had "been informed, on the best authority, that disease has attacked the potatoes at Auchness this very year." You stoutly deny the statement, and reply, youhave been imposed upon. Mr M'Culloch has at this moment 400 tons of perfectly sound potatoes, the produce of his own farm, for which he would not accept £1200; and seed besides, to plant his next year's crop. Well, he has on 92 acres 400 tons, and enough for seed according to your own allowance. He ought, with an average good crop, to have had 800 tons. Competent judges, who saw these potatoes when growing, estimated them at 12 tons per acre; and, in this view, it would appear that nearly two-thirds of them have disappeared. As far, then, as the potato crop at Auchness is concerned, there has, in 1849, been either miserable farming, or there has been something else. Your own figures prove this. You speak of 400 tonssound potatoes. Were there any unsound? Why not have stated that Mr M'Culloch had lost about half of his potatoes this season, by the taint? This would have homologatedBlackwood'sstatement that disease had attacked the Auchness potatoes. But surely the cause of high farming, and the interests of agriculture, cannot be promoted by a suppression of the truth, and by such a lack of controversial candour. However, the scanty crop of potatoes, or the loss by disease, curtails materially the huge profits at Auchness. In 1848, when potatoes were much higher priced than now, Mr M'Culloch was content to take £2 per ton; and although he marks them down in his Balance-sheet for 1849 at £3 per ton, you tell us that he would not accept that for them. Not, indeed, that he has got the £3 per ton, or been offered it. But he thinks that they are worth that money; and according, not to the purchaser's estimate, but to the seller's, they stand for £1200 on the receipt side of the Balance-sheet. This is, upon the whole, the simplest, most convenient, and felicitous mode of keeping up the profits that we remember of; and proves, incontestibly, how sensible Mr M'Culloch is that everything at Auchness turns upon the potato speculation. And yet, with 400 tons only on 92 acres, let us inquire if this was really a profitable crop. Let us see what was the expense of growing them. In your first pamphlet you state that 50 carts of dung and 4 cwt. guano are allowed per acre, (p. 18.) Let us say that the dung is worth 5s. per load, and the guano 9s. 6d. per cwt; there will then be—
I do not calculate the value of the horse and manual labour, which in the cultivation of potatoes is by no means trifling. Let that go to meet the seed potatoes reserved, and the unexhausted manure in the soil: and yet the factor at Auchness seems a loser in 1849, by his potato crop. And yet it is undeniable, nevertheless, in consequence of the extremely depreciated price of grain, that the sale even of this potato crop does add alarger present returnin money to the profit side of the Balance-sheet than a crop of wheat would have done. But as the potato, when sold off the farm, leaves nopabulumfor future manure, the prosperity is more apparent than real. Unless a much larger quantity than 400 tons, even at £3 per ton, can be raised on 92 acres, the crop must ultimately entail loss, which the Balance-sheet will not be able to conceal.
You sneer at Mr Gibson of Woolmet's potato cultivation. Why he, as you yourself stated the case, after allowing for manures, seed, and rent, left himself a profit of £15 on 50 acres of potatoes; while at Auchness, on 92acres, as above shown, the profit, after allowing for manures, seed, and rent, is £281, 4s.less than nothing! Moreover, you keep out of sight that, on the four-course rotation of farming, which Mr Gibson must follow in the neighbourhood of a large town, it is not alone to the profit from the very expensively manured green crop of the first year that the farmer looks alone for a return of his outlay, but chiefly to that from the produce of the three succeeding years, which can be raised after the preparation the land has undergone for the green crop, without farther manuring. You are very violent about Mr Gibson's growing beans. Had you examined Mr Gibson's statements carefully, you would have perceived that the difference in the result, consequent on his substituting 25 acres of beans and turnips for the same quantity of land in potatoes, is only £31, 17s. 6d., instead of the much larger sum which you mention. Did you ever see Mr Gibson's farm of Woolmet? I have, and beg to inform you that I know no better specimen of well manured and highly cultivated land in the county of Mid-Lothian. There is no farmer in Scotland who has received so many prizes for the finest specimens of seed-corn of all kinds, from the Highland and other agricultural societies, as Mr Gibson. This is the gentleman whose farming you ignorantly sneer at.
But you are ready to abandon the peculiar position that you had taken up in reference to the exorbitant cultivation of the potato, and to meet your opponents upon their own ground, as you believe. "Suppose, however," you say, "that nature had, (as you asserted,) annihilated the potato, would Mr M'Culloch not be able to draw any other kind of produce from his 90 acres of highly manured land?" (p. 7.) Why, certainly not, in the same year. Had nature annihilated the potato at Auchness in 1849, Mr M'Culloch would have lost, by his own calculation, £1200, and could have had no other crop—unless, indeed, there be two summers at Auchness within the year. "Had these 90 acres been sown with wheat, they would, at Mr Stephens' own estimate, have produced no less than £810." Mr Stephens did not meditate growing wheat on the moss. Do you mean to say that you can grow wheat on the moss, and profitably, year after year in succession, as was done with the potatoes? But suppose the 90 acres in wheat—that, added to the 55 acres already in wheat, would make 145 acres in wheat on a farm of 260 acres; and this must continue, if there is anything in your theory, and if your annual profits are to be maintained. If these positions you do not mean to maintain, your case falls to pieces. In the mean time it is a mere hypothesis, untried and unproved; and all agricultural experience and science, as far as known, compels us to believe that it would turn out a total failure. But, admitting the hypothesis, still the tenant's profits (seed deducted) would be reduced from £718, 6s., to £328, 6s. You propose another suggestion, however—to allocate the 90 acres partly to an extension of green crop, and partly to an increased breadth of wheat. Will turnips and clover grow, year after year successively, on the moss? This is another hypothesis about as visionary as the preceding. But allow 45 acres of the 90 on turnips and grass for house-feeding, at your nett profit of £6, 11s. 6d. per acre, (p. 12,) this will give £295, 17s. 6d.; and the other 45 acres in wheat, at 38 bushels per acre, and at 5s. per bushel, (your own quantity and price,) and, seed deducted, they give £393, 15s., being,in cumulo, £689, 12s. 6d.—i. e.less than the profit of the potatoes by £510, 7s. 6d., and bringing down the tenant's remuneration from £718, 6s. to £207, 18s. 6d. But this is very far from exhibiting the realities of the position which you have ventured to take up. You assume 5s. per bushel as the price of the wheat. The Wigtonshire fiars, as lately struck, make wheat only 4s. 4d. per bushel. To that price you cannot object. You court a comparison with Messrs Watson and Dudgeon, and in that case you will allow us to raise the rent of Auchness to 32s. per acre, (the rent given in their statistics,) more especially as you contend that it is now worth £2 per acre, (p. 41, 4th edit.) Upon these equitable premises, let us see how the Auchness balance-sheet for crop 1849 will stand.
But even yet we are allowing you advantages which are inadmissible. The supposititious price put upon the cattle, so far beyond the current profit, ought to be largely reduced, and an average of 38 bushels wheat over 100 acres, a portion of these being moss, is certainly much too high. Nevertheless, giving you the benefit of these unusual demands, and the advantages of a superior climate, admirable accommodation, and an annual bonus of 500 loads of sea-weed, it appears, that when your new mode of farming Auchness (the potato being abandoned) is put to the test, that instead of having a remuneration of £718, 6s., Mr M'Culloch loses £64, 12s. 10d. Shuffle the land as you please—crop it as you please—speculate as wildly as you please on the patience and powers of the soil, and grant the most perfect success to attend your speculations, yet it is as certain as arithmetic can make it, that, the moment you depart from the potato culture, the pecuniary marvels at Auchness wholly vanish. It was rash to throw down the gauntlet as you have done. You ought to have "stuck to your text," (the potato,)—as long as the text will stick to you. According to your new mode of arranging the culture at Auchness, there must annually, on a farm of 260 acres, be 100 acres wheat, and 110 acres green crop. How long the land will endure this remains to be proved. I have not a shadow of a doubt that not very many years would elapse before the reduced quantity of wheat per acre, and the reduced value of the turnip crop, would place the factor at Auchness in a worse category than Messrs Watson and Dudgeon; and that he would awake to the conviction that, as he has found there is something in the potato rot, so there may be something, too, in a rotation of crops.
Still, upon your new hypothesis, at the present rent, there would be a margin of profit. Let us examine into this matter somewhat more narrowly. "Deducting Mr M'Culloch's 92 acres of potatoes, 55 acres of wheat, and 22 acres of oats, we have 91 acres left; 50 of which are in turnips, and 41 in clover and grass. The nett produce yielded by the stock fed on these 91 acres, (besides the keep of the farm-horses,) this very year, in the midst of all this depression, will not be less (after deducting purchased food) than £600, which is equal to £6, 11s. 6d. an acre, besides the valuable stock of manure which has, at the same time, been accumulated," (p. 12.) In this statement there are sundry slips of the memory. If the keep of the horses at Auchness consisted solely of turnips and the succulent clover, as you seem to say, they must be peculiarly constituted animals, and endowed with most singular peristaltic powers. On such liquescent diet they might, perhaps, at one and the same time, work their work, and thoroughly manure the fields. There would be some difficulty in so timing the conjoined operations, one wouldthink, as to avoid waste as well as danger. Mr Huxtable's pigs, I fancy, would be pleasant and savoury company compared to the Auchness horses. However, you forget that, by the 17th January last, these horses had consumed 1100 bushels of oats, and that £105 worth more of oats had been bought to supply their wants, and those of the servants. (See Auchness Balance-sheet, pp. 46, 47.) Moreover, the horses must surely have been allowed the larger proportion of the oat-straw, (there is no hay,) if not the whole of it. The feeding-stock had the whole straw and chaff grown upon the farm, with the exception of what fell to the share of the horses: and thus £600was notthe nett produce of these 91 acres of green crop, but along with that of the greater part of the fodder grown upon the farm. Again, you deduct "the purchased food;" but why not deduct the purchased manures, before you speak of "the nett produce yielded by the stock?" Still, with these qualifications, £6, 11s. 6d. per acre, for the green crop and fodder, is a remarkable profit; so remarkable for 1849-50, in my estimation, as to be unparalleled. Let us look at the memorable Balance-sheet for a little: 44 cattle bought in June are sold out at £5, 5s. of an advance per head; 208 wethers are sold at 9s. per head advance;—all this before 17th January last. We are not told what the animals were bought in at. We are not told what they brought per stone. Mystery envelops the whole transaction, and we are left to grope and guess at the mode in which this remarkable result was arrived at. An average of £5, 5s. per head upon 44 cattle, and of 9s. per head upon 208 wethers, is so extraordinary a profit in these times, that I doubt if two other agriculturists in the island could record a similar experience. The fact is, that everywhere the elements of incredibility are apparent on this part of the Auchness Balance-sheet. None would question it more lustily than Mr Mechi. Bullocks which cost him £249 gave him a profit of £37, and sheep which cost him £332 a profit of £95, during the past season! No wonder that he describes bullocks as "ungrateful fellows;" and that in spite of Porcius and his Attic salt he is in love with the Rector's pigs. But indeed Mechi seems to differ with youtoto cælo. So far from advocating, along with you, a more extensive cultivation of green crops, he is "quite satisfied that they must be made secondary and subservient to the larger consumption of corn or cake."—(See his live-stock account for 1849, of 2d Feb. inGardeners' Chronicle.) How are such "discordant utterances" to be reconciled? Methinks you high-farming gentlemen should agree more nearly with one another, before you dictate so dogmatically to others. Certain it is that the result at Auchness could not arise from the exquisite quality of the animals; for it is demonstrable that oxen and wethers, as fine and fat as any ever fed there, or as ever were led to the shambles, have this season produced to their owners no such profit. Had 8 or 10 of the 44 cattle brought such a profit, the thing would have been intelligible. It is the immense profit per head, over such a lot of cattle and sheep, that has excited the universal scepticism. But if we remember that these 44 cattle may have been fed during a period of seven months, then the profit per head is more intelligible. But if so, of how many months does the agricultural year at Auchness consist? Looking at the two Balance-sheets rendered, they seem to run into one another in an inextricable fashion; and I suspect that, in a cycle of three or four years, one year with its profits will have disappeared and been absorbed. If this does not explain the mystery, we must suppose that the stock was bought in at an unusually favourable rate, and that they were sold out fat, at a larger sum per stone than any other feeder has got. This would indicate that the factor at Auchness is a market-man of unrivalled dexterity—the luckiest wight in driving a bargain that ever handlednowt. In fact, his good luck here seems as singular as it was in the matter of the moss and its potatoes. But what has this to do with high farming? Is the success of agriculture to depend upon happy accidents, and the possession of a genius for marketing operations unrivalled and unapproachable?
But something more astonishing remains. Look at this item of income,—"86 cattlein course of feeding, at £5, 5s. per head advance." The cattle are not fed—they are in course of feeding. They are not sold—no price has been offered for them. They may be "decimated" by the murrain; prices may fall—they have fallen; the factor's good luck as a seller may leave him; but the sanguine Mr M'Culloch has resolved that the profit per head shall be £5, 5s., and down he puts to the income side of the balance-sheet the neat aditament of £451, 10s. He has 400 tons of potatoes; they may perish in the pits, as in many places they are doing. It matters not. Mr M'Culloch has made up his mind that they are worth £3 per ton, and he transfers to his profits, as received, the sum of £1200. We wonder if the factor's books are kept in the same fashion as the farm books? If so, they must contain some pleasant entries—such as, A. B.'s rent, £1200—not paid—intended to be paid—gave him a discharge in full. Why, the balance-sheet at Auchness isavowedly supposititious—a magnificent Californian fiction. Mr M'Culloch seems one of those blessed visionaries who riot in the prospect of profits to be realised, and whose strong imagination gives existence and reality to the possibilities of ideal gain. Upon the authority of its framer, we see now that the Auchness balance-sheet is professedly pictorial and factitious; and it is upon this stable foundation that the farmers of Britain are asked to invest more capital in their business, and to practise the Auchness mode of husbandry. Are you and Mr M'Culloch in earnest? I can scarcely believe it. Cicero tells us that one augur meeting another could scarcely help smiling; and one can scarcely help thinking that you and Mr M'Culloch must have many a quiet laugh at the boundless gullibility of the Free-trade press and the Free-trade proprietors, swallowing your high farming as the substitute for Protection, and the remedy for the sufferings entailed on the kingdom by Free-trade legislation.