Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 68, No 422, December 1850

The national advantages of small estates, as compared with the scale of properties most common in this country, have been most fully and systematically discussed by M. Passy, as well as by Mr Thornton, Mr Ramsay, and Mr Mill, among our own writers. But Mr Laing has had the credit of attracting attention to the subject by his extensive personal inquiries as to the actual results of the Continental plan, and by showing (what many English readers are slow to believe) that the "petite culture," as pursued in north and central Germany, and in Belgium, so far from being incompatible with the profitable use of the land, is, in fact, more productive than the opposite system of large holdings. These views were strongly expressed in his Notes of a Traveller; and his evidence in favour of peasant proprietorship is greatly founded on by Mr Mill, in the able defence of that system which forms part of his work on political economy. The book now before us takes a more enlarged, and in some respects a different view of the question, presenting it in all its bearings, favourable and unfavourable; and thus furnishing the inquirer with all the materials on which he is left to build his own conclusions.

One who looks at the subject for the first time, and whose beau-ideal of agricultural perfection is formed on the pattern of Norfolk or Haddington, finds some difficulty in believing that a country cut up into small "laird-ships" of from five to twenty acres, can be advantageously cultivated at all. He naturally takes it for granted that, as regards efficiency of labour and quantity of produce, the large scale must always have the advantage of the smaller; and that the spade and the flail can, in the long run, have no more chance in competition with the Tweeddale plough and Crosskill's steam thrashing-machine, than a dray-horse with Flying Dutchman. And in England, or any country similarly circumstanced, his conclusion would no doubt be perfectly correct; and yet a visit to Flanders, Holstein, or the Palatinate, will convince him that the boorish-looking owners of the patches of farms he finds there, with the clumsiest implements, and, to his eyes, most uncouth ways of working, do somehow contrive to raise crops which he, with all his costly engines, and the last new wrinkle from Baldoon or Tiptree Hall, cannot pretend to match. Their superiority as to the cereal grains is perhaps questionable; but, looking to the quantity of produce generally, no impartial observer can doubt that, after making every allowance for difference of soil and climate, a given area of land in Belgium yields more food than the same extent in England. How is this to be accounted for? Let us hear Mr Laing's explanation.

"The clean state of the crops here (in Flanders) – not a weed in a mile of country, for they are all hand-weeded out of the land, and applied for fodder or manure – the careful digging of every corner which the plough cannot reach; the headlands and ditch-slopes, down to the water-edge, and even the circle round single trees close up to the stem, being all dug, and under crop of some kind – show that the stock of people, to do all this minute handwork, must be very much greater than the land employs with us. The rent-paying farmer, on a nineteen years' lease, could not afford eighteen-pence or two shillings a-day of wages for doing such work, because it never could make him any adequate return. But to the owner of the soil it is worth doing such work by his own and his family's labour at odd hours; because it is adding to the perpetual fertility and value of his own property… His piece of land to him is his savings-bank, in which the value of his labour is hoarded up, to be repaid him at a future day, and secured to his family after him."[29 - Observations, p. 24.]

This is the secret of the marvellous industry that has converted even the barren sands and marshes of these districts into one continuous garden. It has been accomplished by what, for want of a better expression, we may call spontaneous, in opposition to hired labour. The labourer is himself the owner of the soil, and to one so circumstanced work assumes quite a different aspect; the spade goes deeper, the scythe takes a wider sweep, and the muscles lift a heavier burden. No agricultural chemistry is so potent as the sense of property. The incentive to his daily toil is not the dismal vision of a parish workhouse in the background, but an ever-fresh hope for the days that are before him. His fare may be hard, his clothing coarse, and indulgences rarely procurable; but his abstinence is voluntary – "et saltem pauperies abest."

There can be no doubt that a much larger proportion of the population will find employment and subsistence from the land under this system than under ours. Mr Laing illustrates this by supposing the case of an estate in Scotland of 1600 arable acres divided into eight farms of 200 acres each; and he assumes that the labour employed on each of these farms, taking one season with another, is equivalent to that of ten people all the year round – an estimate which is not far from the truth on a well-managed farm.[30 - The paternal care which our Government takes of agriculture leaves us to grope our way by mere guess-work in all statistical questions affecting it. For want of a better guide, we may refer to Mr M'Culloch's often-quoted estimates, according to which, it would appear, that there is one labourer to each 13½ acres of arable land in England, one to each 19 5⁄7 acres in Scotland – almost exactly the proportion assumed by Mr Laing.] Such an estate of 1600 acres will thus afford constant employment to eighty labourers.

"Now take under your eye a space of land here, in Flanders, that you judge to be about 1600 acres. Walk over it, examine it. Every foot of the land is cultivated – dug with the spade or hoe where horse and plough cannot work; and all is in crop, or in preparation for crop. In our best farmed districts there are corners and patches in every field lying waste and uncultivated, because the large rent-paying farmers cannot afford labour, superintendence, and manure, for such minute portions of land and garden-like work as the owner of a small piece of land can bestow on every corner and spot of his own property. Here the whole 1600 acres must be in garden-farms of five or six acres; and it is evident that in the amount of produce from the land, in the crops of rye, wheat, barley, rape, clover, lucern, and flax for clothing material, which are the usual crops, the 1600 acres under such garden-culture surpass the 1600 acres under large-farm cultivation, as much as a kitchen-garden surpasses in productiveness a common field. On the 1600 acres here in Flanders or Belgium, instead of the eight farmers with their eighty farm-servants, there will be from three hundred to three hundred and twenty families, or from fourteen hundred to sixteen hundred individuals, each family working its own piece of land; and with some property in cows, sheep, pigs, utensils, and other stock in proportion to their land, and with constant employment, and secure subsistence on their own little estates."[31 - Observations, p. 39.]

The influence such a mode of life produces on the character of the people is a consideration of higher moment than its economical results. And on this point observation seems in general to confirm the opinion which we should naturally form beforehand. Compared with the employments of mechanics, that of the husbandman demands a much higher and more habitual exercise of the faculty of judgment. His mind is not tied down to the repetition of the same act, chipping a stone, straightening a wire, watching the whirling of a wheel, from the beginning of the year to the end, but almost each day brings a new set of thoughts with it. He cannot proceed a step without forming processes of induction from his observations, and exercising his reason as to the connection of the manifold phenomena he sees around him with their proper causes. The peasant proprietor has to task his inventive faculties too, in order to turn all his humble resources to the best advantage; and his success depends more upon his intelligent use of the limited means at his command, than upon the mere bodily energy of his labour. Of such a person it is, therefore, truly and pregnantly said by Mr Laing, that though he may not be able to read or write, he has an educated mind – a mind trained and disciplined in the school of nature. And his position favours the development of his moral powers still more than his intellectual faculties, by teaching him patience, self-restraint, thought for the future, and, above all, that humility which can scarcely fail to be felt by one who finds himself ever in contact with unseen powers and influences beyond his control.

The general diffusion of the means of comfort and of simple enjoyment, earned by unbought rural industry, is an idea that takes a strong hold of the imagination. The fancy wanders back to the days of the old yeomen of England, or further still to Horace's charming pictures of country life, or to Claudian's Old Man of Verona, thus rendered into glorious English by Sir John Beaumont: —

"Thrice happy he whose age is spent upon his owne,
The same house sees him old that him a child hath known;
He leans upon his staffe in sand where once he crept —
His memory long descentes of one poor cote hath kept.

Unskilful in affaires, he knows no city neare,
So freely he enjoys the light of heaven more cleare.
The yeeres by sev'rall corne – not consuls he computes;
He notes the spring by floures, and autumne by the fruits —
One space put down the sun, and bring again his rays;
Thus by a certaine orbe he measures out his dayes,
Rememb'ring some greate oke from small beginning spred,
He sees the woode grow old which with himself was bred," &c.

In every man's mind we believe there is a quiet corner, where the memories or the imaginations of country life take root and thrive spontaneously. Even the old, hardened, care-worn dweller among the sights and sins of cities will "babble o' green fields" when all other earthly things have faded from his mind. In England especially, the preference for country life amounts almost to a passion; and most of us are ready enough to admit, without demanding many reasons, that a people whose chief employment and dependence is the cultivation of their own lands, will be individually happier than if the scene of their labours were in the mine or the mill. But let us beware lest our rural partialities lead us too far.

We may acknowledge that the social condition of a country in which the land is distributed into small properties, affords, in many respects, a better chance of contentment to the people than is enjoyed by the labouring classes generally in Britain. But whether such a system be adapted to our circumstances, whether its introduction to any considerable extent be at all practicable here, is obviously quite another question. The subject has been treated hitherto by British authors with too little reference to the condition of their own country. Benevolent enthusiasts talk of peasant-proprietorship as if it were a harbour of refuge from all our difficulties, as if a return to that unsophisticated mode of life under which —ut prisca gens mortalium– each man of us should eat and be satisfied with the fruits reared by his own labour upon his own land, were at once the simplest and the most obvious remedy for our complicated social evils, and as easily accomplished as the passing of a railway suspension bill. Even Mr Laing, we think, in his former works, directed attention perhaps too exclusively to the benefits which he saw to be connected with the system in the northern parts of the Continent, without sufficiently adverting to the causes which render it unsuitable for countries situated like ours. But this omission has been remedied in the work before us, in which, after tracing the beneficial results of a minute subdivision of land property, he turns the picture, and impartially points out its unfavourable features; and to any one who has been indulging in the dream that the culture and territorial system of Belgium or Norway can be transplanted into the soil of England, we earnestly recommend the study of Mr Laing's sixth chapter. We cannot afford space to follow him through the adverse side of the argument, but may state briefly the chief points he brings forward.

In the first place, the condition of a society in which the population is principally employed in raising their food upon their own little properties, is necessarily a stationary condition. We speak, be it observed, of a people principally engaged in this occupation; for, in proportion as commerce and manufactures increase among them, labour will become expensive, capital will accumulate in masses, and the peculiar advantages of the small estate system will gradually disappear. The estates themselves will cease to be small; for, as a natural result, men who have made money will add farm to farm, and create large properties, unless there be some counteracting influence, such as the law of equal succession in France, to disperse these accumulations as fast as they arise. Two conditions, then, are necessary to the continuance of peasant-proprietorship among a people as a permanent institution. 1st, An imperfect development of trade and manufactures; and, 2d, a law of inheritance that shall discourage men from forming large properties and transmitting them to their heirs. The state of such a community then, we say, is a stationary one. Every man is like his neighbour, and each succeeding generation is only a copy of the one that preceded it – contented, it may be, industrious and peaceable, but incapable of making a single important step in civilisation. And here we see the nature and extent of that bewildering contrariety which we have noticed between man's social progress and his other interests of happiness and morality. We cannot resist the conviction that the proper destiny of man is, that in every community each generation should be wiser, as well as better and happier, than that which has gone before it. But here we have before us a condition eminently fitted to favour the latter objects, while it acts as a barrier to all material improvement in the arts, the economical applications of science, and all the refinements of social life. In his habits, tastes, and opinions, the bauer of this generation in the Rhenish provinces, the udaller of Norway, is just the same as his forefathers were five hundred years ago. His simple wants are supplied almost entirely by the industry of his own household, and the travelling pedlar furnishes him with the few articles of luxury in which he indulges. He is not only the owner, cultivator, and labourer of the land, but he is usually his own carpenter, builder, saddler, baker, brewer – often his own clothier, tailor, and shoemaker. Granting, then, that the gross produce of the soil is greater when cultivated by a race of petty landowners, than by capitalists employing hired labour, and that the land will thus maintain a greater number of agricultural labourers, it is obvious that the surplus produce that remains for the support of other branches of industry is diminished in exactly an inverse ratio. The production of commodities for exchange is therefore inconsiderable; and the growth and circulation of capital are necessarily slow.

"Petty cultivation, when pushed to its farthest extent, terminates in spade husbandry, and in it, therefore, the utmost consequences of a minute subdivision of land must be seen. There is no doubt that a country cultivated in this way could be made to produce much more than under any other system of agriculture; and were food the only necessary of man, it might therefore support a much larger population from the growth of its own soil. But then the wealth of this population would be reduced to a bare subsistence; the whole crop, or nearly all, would be consumed by those employed in raising it, and there would be little or nothing over to purchase home or foreign manufactures, the productions of art, or the works of genius, and no means of supporting a population engaged in such occupations. And even though persons might be found willing to addict themselves to the arts and sciences without expectation of pecuniary reward, yet none would be rich enough to have leisure to follow such pursuits. Thus, gradually, a universal barbarism would overspread the land."

Mr Ramsay, from whom we have copied these sentences, and whose judicious remarks on this subject well deserve the attention of the inquirer, here supposes the system of petty cultivation carried out to its utmost limits; but the same consequences, though in a less degree, will necessarily follow every step in that direction. And in point of fact, it is precisely the state of matters in those countries of Europe where agriculture is wholly carried on by peasant proprietors, – where, consequently, there is no independent and wealthy class to maintain a home trade; and the trifling commerce that exists is kept alive chiefly by the demands of that class who live on Government employment, and at the expense of the public.

We have adverted to the connection between the petty territorial system and the law of inheritance. If we could suppose the whole surface of England were to be parcelled out to-morrow into small holdings, and then placed in the hands of labouring men, it is clear that, while enterprise and the spirit of accumulation were left as free as at present, the whole arrangement would be upset before the end of the twelvemonth; and that, in a few generations at furthest, property would be found gathered into large masses, just as it is now. Some artificial means, then, would be necessary for limiting the liberty of disposing of property – some such contrivance as the compulsory law of equal succession in France and the Provinces of the Rhine – to provide against the possibility of the landowner ever becoming wealthy, and rising above the condition of a peasant. But are we prepared for all the consequences to which an equal partition of the land among the children of the peasant proprietor would inevitably lead, and has to a great extent already led in those countries? In communities such as Norway, where equal inheritance has grown up with the old institutions of the nation, and all their domestic customs are intimately connected with it, its evil effects are in a great measure neutralised by traditionary usages, which supply the place of law, and prevent the subdivision of property from reaching a dangerous extreme. But national customs cannot be adopted extempore; and the experience of France is surely a sufficient proof of the danger of attempting factitiously to adapt that system of succession to the habits and institutions of an old and highly civilised nation. And yet, without some such restriction of the freedom of testation, peasant-proprietorship, as a permanent social principle, is impossible. It is becoming every day more apparent, that the compulsory subdivision of landed property is the main source of the restless and disorganised condition of the French population. The sons of the peasant proprietor spend their youth in the labours of the farm, and look to the land alone as the means of their subsistence. The acre or two that must fall legally to their share at the death of their father is regarded as a sufficient provision against the chance of indigence; and they rarely think of seeking employment in other industrious occupations, or of applying themselves steadily to a trade. The consequence is, that at that age which, in our country, is the prime of a working man's life, they find themselves left to the bare subsistence they can scrape from their miserable inheritance – without regular occupation, unfit for mercantile pursuits, and ripe for war and social tumult. Is it possible to imagine a condition more fitted to foster that reckless and turbulent military spirit – ever ready to burst the barriers of constitutional law – which lies at the root of France's social calamities? Subdivision of land property and perpetual peace – these are the two great elements which our Manchester lawgivers think are to change the face of civilised Europe. Most truly does Mr Laing declare, that ingenuity could not have devised two principles more hostile to each other in their very nature, and more irreconcilable in the past history of the world, than those which Mr Cobden and his followers have selected as the twin pillars of their new social system.

"If Mr Cobden be right in considering this social state (the universal diffusion of property in land) pacific in its elements and tendencies, all political economy, as well as all history, must be wrong!" – (P. 110.)

No state can be pacific, no state can be secure, in which there is not an intervening class between those who govern and those who are governed – a class who shall, as our author says, act "like the buffers and ballast waggons of a railway train," and prevent those violent jerks and concussions which shake the machine of government to pieces; and the existence of such a class is excluded by the very notion of peasant proprietorship. The truth is, there are two, and only two, kinds of government compatible with the territorial system of France, and her law of succession. These are, an absolute democracy on the one hand, and military despotism on the other – the tyranny of one man or of millions; and between these two polar points of the political compass, her destinies have been vibrating for the last half century.

Let us turn our view once more homewards. We have frequently and earnestly endeavoured to impress upon the public that the accumulation of property, real as well as movable, into vast and unwieldy masses, has gone too far in our own land. We have consistently opposed that policy which tends to give capital an undue and factitious influence, and, in its precipitate zeal to stimulate production, overlooks all other interests. But we cannot deceive ourselves with the imagination, that peasant proprietorship is the specific antidote to these evils. Pleasing as such Arcadian visions may be to the speculative man, who turns away in weariness and perplexity from the struggle of discordant and competing interests, no one surely can believe that they can possibly be realised here, or that the cultivation of the land by peasant owners can ever become a normal and permanent element in our social condition. The ingenious reasonings of Mr Mill and Mr Thornton seem to establish nothing more than that such a state is compatible with good agriculture, and with that contentment which Mandeville calls "the bane of industry;" and that nations, like young couples in the honeymoon —

"Though very poor, may still be very blest."

But no one has seriously set himself to show how a system in such direct antagonism to all our existing institutions and habits – a system tantamount to a retrogression of three hundred years in our history, is to be engrafted on the laws of Great Britain. Some writers, indeed, are fond of referring obscurely to the great measures of Prince Hardenberg and Von Stein in Prussia, and to their beneficial results, as if they formed a precedent and argument for the creation of peasant estates in this country. But every one who has made himself acquainted with the true nature and purpose of the change introduced by those ministers – which was merely a commutation of certain burdens on the beneficiary owners of the land – knows that no such change is possible in Britain, simply because there are no such burdens to commute.[32 - Previous to Hardenberg's administration, the peasants enjoyed the dominium utile of their lands, (bauern hofe, as they were called,) but subject to the payment of a certain quit-rent or feu-duty to the superior lord; and the scope of the change was to make these quit-rents redeemable, by the cession of a certain fixed proportion of the land and to vest the absolute property of the remainder in the vassal. It is obvious, therefore, that there is not the slightest analogy between the case of the Prussian feuar (as we should call him in Scotland) and that of an ordinary tenant-at-will or lessee of land, and that the commutation we have described has no similarity whatever to the schemes of "tenant-right," of which we now hear so much.] An isolated experiment of such plantations may be tried here and there, and by artificial culture may be kept up for a time: but it can have no permanent influence on the nation at large. Acts of Parliament cannot make us forget what we have learnt, and relapse into the condition our fathers were in before the Revolution. We cannot retrace our steps at will, and fall back upon some imaginary stage of our past history, when contentment and rude simplicity are supposed to have overspread the land. Examples there are, no doubt, of nations once great and opulent, whose arts, inventions, and civilisation, are now almost forgotten. But changes like these are not studiously brought about by the politic enactments of rulers, but by indirect causes of decay; and a people that has once begun to go back in civilisation must gradually sink into indigence and barbarism. Whether our past advancement, then, has been for good or for evil, it is now too late to retreat. The progress of a society, composed chiefly of peasant landowners, resembles the motion of an eddy at the margin of a great stream – slowly circling for ever in the same narrow round. We, more daring than others, have ventured out into the very centre of the flood where the current rolls strongest; and to stand still now is as impossible as to breast the Spey when the winter's snows are melting on the Grampians.

Following Mr Laing's footsteps, we have pointed out some of the dangers inseparable from a division of the soil into small estates; but we are very far indeed from considering the tenure of land in this country as incapable of amendment. It is mischievous as well as visionary to talk of remodelling our territorial system on the pattern of Prussia or Belgium, or any other country; but it is also mischievous, and most impolitic, to create or continue legal impediments to the natural subdivision of property. It is impossible to doubt that a very general desire prevails among the labouring classes, and those who have laid up little capitals in banks and friendly societies, to acquire portions of land suitable to their means of investment. The large prices paid for such lots when they are found in the market, and the eagerness with which even such dubious projects as Mr Feargus O'Connor's have been laid hold of, prove the fact to a certain extent; and it has been strongly confirmed by the inquiries of the committee which sat last session for investigating the means available to the working-classes for the investment of their small savings. The great extension of allotments, in late years, may perhaps have helped to foster this disposition; while it shows how anxious these classes are to acquire the possession of land, even on the most uncertain and unfavourable tenure. However disapprovingly our political economists may shake their heads at the progress made by that system, as not squaring with their doctrines, we cannot doubt that, so far as it has gone, its results have been eminently beneficial; and the thanks of the nation are due to that enlightened nobleman who has taken the lead in this course, and has created, we are told, no less than four thousand holdings of this description on his estates. But allotments do not meet the difficulty of finding a field for the secure investment of the smaller accumulations of industry. The question then is, whether it be right or safe that so strong and healthful a wish should prevail among the people, without the means of gratifying it? Let us shut out of view all the crude and disjointed schemes for a redistribution of property on a wider basis, and the limitation of the right of testation; and, without undermining the structure of the law, endeavour to remove those parts of it which present technical or fiscal impediments to the acquisition of small properties, and to adapt it generally to the wants of the community. The amendment of the Scotch entail law, and of the process of conveyance, as well as the recent remission of part of the burden of stamp duties, have already cleared away some of those obstacles. But much remains to be done, especially in England, in simplifying technical forms, and abridging the expense of conveyances in small transfers. In this respect, we are still far behind the nations of the Continent. Until the recent alteration of the stamp duties, the expense of effecting a sale of land in England, and of creating a mortgage, was in ordinary circumstances thus proportioned to the value of the subject: —

Who would ever dream of applying his savings in the purchase of a piece of land of £50 value, when he must pay £30 more to make a title to it? The new scale of stamp duties alters the proportion; but the expense of legal writings, which forms the larger half of the charges above stated, remains undiminished, and operates as an absolute prohibition of the sale and purchase of land for investment under £1000 value. Such are the intricacies of the system, and such the want of a proper registry,[33 - We are glad to observe, in the recently published Report of the Royal Commission presided over by Lord Langdale, some indication of progress towards supplying the want of a system of Registry in England, – a want which, as the Commissioners truly affirm, operates as a heavy burden on land property, and a material diminution of its value.] that we are told by the highest authorities that there is scarcely a title to be met with on which a purchaser can be quite secure, and which does not afford room for dispute and litigation. Now, contrast all this with the way in which the transfer of property is effected abroad. We have before us a copy[34 - Evidence of Lords' Committee on the Burdens affecting Land, p. 423.] of an actual conveyance of a parcel of land in the Duchy of Nassau, the price of which was £181. The form of the contract extends to only four lines, and contains a reference to an appended schedule, which specifies briefly in separate columns the description of the subject, its extent, and its number on the register. The expense of the whole transaction, including government charges, was £4, 7s. The sale of a similar estate in England would, until the other day, have been attended with an expense of about £24.

But we cannot enter into the specific means by which the exchange of land properties, especially those of small amount, may yet be facilitated; our object being merely to show how desirable, and how strictly coincident with the soundest conservative policy, it is to remove all discouragements to the natural employment of capital on the soil of the country.

This leads us to the mention of one of those topics of Mr Laing's Observations, in which his opinions seem to be more ingenious than correct; we allude to the apparently paradoxical view he takes of the ultimate consequences of abolishing agricultural protection.

Mr Laing is not an observer who runs any risk of being entangled in the obvious meshes of the Free-Trade net. He has seen too much of other countries, and has too just an appreciation of the practical value of politico-economical theories, to be deceived by the common sophisms of the Manchester dialectics. No one has more ably exposed the cardinal fallacy on which the whole system hinges – that a permanently low price of corn is necessarily beneficial to the people. In the former series of his Observations, published at a time when the common-sense of the country was beginning to give way before the bold and clamorous assertions of the League, he showed, by arguments sufficient to have convinced any one who would have listened to calm reason, that, in a country like Great Britain, the cheapness of imported corn, though it may enrich the employer of labour, cannot in the long run be an advantage to the working man. He pointed out clearly, too, the fallacy that ran through all the calculations of Dr Bowring and Mr Jacob, as to the supply of grain which the Northern countries of Europe could send us, and the price they could afford to take for it. Every week's experience is now showing the utter worthlessness of the large mass of estimates and returns compiled by these great statistical authorities, and confirming what Mr Laing foretold in opposition to all their calculations – that our principal imports would be drawn from the countries whose produce reaches us through the Baltic, at prices which, in ordinary seasons, must uniformly undersell the English grower in his own markets. The reason assigned by him is a very clear one, and well deserves the attention of those landowners and farmers at home, who are still flattering themselves with the belief that the rates and quantities of the grain imports of the last two years have been occasioned by temporary causes – that the importers must have been losing largely, and will soon cease to prosecute an unremunerative trade.

"Why cannot the British farmer, with his greater skill, capital, and economy of production, raise vastly greater crops, and undersell with advantage, at least in the British market, the foreign grain, which has heavy charges of freight, warehouse rent, and labourage against it? The reason is this: The foreign grain brought to England from the Continent or Europe consists either of rents, quit-rents, or feu-duties, paid in kind by the actual farmer; or it is the surplus produce of the small estate of the peasant proprietor. In either case the subsistence of the family producing it is taken off, and also whatever is required to pay tithe, rates, and even taxes, which, as well as rent, are not paid in money, but in naturalia– in grain, and generally in certain proportions of the crops raised. The free surplus for exportation may be sold at any price in the English market, however low; because, if it bring in nothing at all, the loss neither deranges the circumstances nor the ordinary subsistence and way of living of the farmers producing it. All their rents or payments are settled in grain; all their subsistence, clothing, and necessary expenditure are provided for; and the surplus is merely a quantity which must be sold, because it is perishable; and which, if it sells well, may enable them to lay out a little more on the gratifications and tastes of a higher state of civilisation; but if it sells badly, or for nothing at all, does not affect their means of reproduction, or even their ordinary habits, enjoyments, way of living, or stock. They have not paid a price for their corn in rent, wages, manures, and other outlay of money, as the British farmer does before he brings his corn to market, and have, therefore, no minimum below which they cannot afford to sell it without ruin."[35 - Observations, p. 154.]

Mr Laing's intimate acquaintance with the habits and condition of those countries, which now seem destined to stand in the same relation to Great Britain as Numidia did to decaying Rome, has enabled him also to point out how vain is the expectation that they will permanently extend the use of our manufactures in proportion to our consumption of their corn. No one has more forcibly shown the insanity of sacrificing, for so vague a prospect, the prosperity of those classes who chiefly maintain the home market.

"The superior importance of the home market for all that the manufacturing industry of Great Britain produces, compared to what the foreign market, including even the colonial, takes off, furnishes one of the strongest arguments against the abolition of the Corn Laws… The home consumpt, not the foreign, is undeniably that which the great mass of British manufacturing labour and capital is engaged in supplying. Take away from the home consumers the means to consume – that is, the high and artificial value of their labour, or rate of wages produced by the working of the Corn Laws – and you stop this home market. You cut off the spring from which it is fed. You sacrifice a certain home market for an uncertain foreign market. You sacrifice four-fifths for the chance of augmenting one-fifth. If the one-fifth, the foreign consumpt, should be augmented so as to equal the four-fifths – the home consumpt – it would still be a question of very doubtful policy whether it should be so augmented: whether the means of living of so large a proportion of the productive classes should be made to depend so entirely upon a demand which political circumstances might suddenly cut off," &c.[36 - Notes, p. 287.]

Knowing the opinions held by Mr Laing to be thus adverse to that change of the law which virtually gave to the metayeur or proprietor of Holstein, Pomerania, or Poland, a preference in Mark Lane over the farmer of Norfolk or Lincolnshire, it was with some surprise, and some apprehension for the consistency of the author, that, in turning over the table of contents of the volume before us, we came to the following heading: – "On the abolition of the Corn Laws as a Conservative measure for the English landed interest."

The process by which he has arrived at the conclusion, that a measure confessedly so disastrous in its immediate consequences will ultimately turn out beneficial to one section at least of the landed interest, seems to be this: He thinks that, in the chief corn-growing countries of the Continent, cultivation is already so generally extended over all the soils capable of yielding any return, that the land cannot, in any circumstances, give employment to a greater number of the inhabitants than it does already; whereas Great Britain contains, in his opinion, a much larger proportional area of improvable soil, which forms a reserve or provision for the future increase of our population. A succession of bad harvests in Germany or France, or any considerable addition to their present population, would necessarily reduce these countries, he believes, to extreme famine and misery; because, the land being already fully occupied and filled up, and their surplus numbers having no considerable outlet in manufacturing or commercial industry, they have no resources to fall back upon in seasons of calamity. But in England there still remains a large extent of "woods, and groves planted and preserved for ornament, parks, pleasure-grounds, lawns, shrubberies, old grass-fields producing only crops for luxury, such as pasture and hay for the finer breeds of horses;" while a still larger area of arable ground is left uncultivated in Ireland and Scotland. Hence, as our population increases, we possess a safety-valve in our untilled soil which does not exist on the Continent; we have still the means of subsisting our daily-increasing numbers; and, so long at least as these means last, it is probable that the owners of the already cultivated lands will be left in the peaceable enjoyment of their property. But that possession would not have been secure had the abolition of the Corn Laws not been conceded at the time it was – the people might have driven the landowners from their occupations, as they did in the first French Revolution; "the free importation of food has averted a similar social convulsion, and has deprived the agitator and hireling speech-maker of his plea of oppression from class interests, and conventional laws in favour of the landowners."[37 - Observations, p. 153.] These seem to be the grounds on which Mr. Laing regards the abolition of the Corn Laws as a Conservative measure – "which will preserve, for some generations at least, to our nobility, gentry, and landed interests, their domains, their estates, and their proper social interests."

As this line of defence seems to be a favourite one with the straggling remnant of that party, who, having been the immediate instruments by which the change was effected, nevertheless still venture to claim for themselves the title of Conservatives, we may shortly review the grounds on which it rests. So far as Mr. Laing's adoption of it is concerned, we may remark that the conclusion, taken by itself, is not absolutely incongruous with that disapproval of the measure of 1816 which the author has elsewhere expressed so strongly; because, in fact, he regards the question from two very different points of view. The political philosopher occupies a very different standing ground from a minister or senator. From his speculative elevation, his eye passes over the events and consequences nearest to him, and strives to penetrate the dim possibilities of the future; and if we look at human events from this ground, there are perhaps few even of the severest public calamities that are not followed by some compensatory, though it may be distant, benefit. If we can shut our eyes to the wretchedness and desolation caused by a great fire in a crowded town, we may look forward to a time when the narrow alleys and unwholesome dwellings, now in ruins before us, shall be replaced by roomy and well-built habitations, and we may perhaps consider the prospective health and comforts of the next occupants as counterbalancing the present misery. It may or it may not prove true, that the concession of 1816 will put an end to disaffection, and be remembered for generations to come in the hearts of a contented and grateful people; it may or it may not secure the aristocracy in the peaceable enjoyment of their patrimonial estates and privileges.

These, however, are results that every one will admit to be at least problematical, while there can be no doubt whatever as to the direct and immediate consequences of the measure. The most obstinate partisan no longer ventures to question the distress and ruin that is every day spreading among the larger section of the British people – the labourers, tenant farmers, and smaller landowners. And now the sufferers are told to make the most of what is left to them, and be thankful that they have escaped a revolution. It may, perchance, occur to them to question whether, in regard to their property at least, the chances of a revolution would have made their condition much worse than it is at present. Looking at the estimates of the depreciation of their possessions, which have been so triumphantly paraded by their enemies, they may be inclined to doubt whether an insurrection, or even a foreign invasion, would have cost them greatly more than ninety-one millions a-year. To the humbler and most oppressed section of the agricultural body, the congratulation on their escape from a worse fate than that they now complain of, may sound not unlike the exhortation of a highwayman who, having stripped his victim of his cash, bids him bless his stars that he is allowed to get off with whole bones, and a coat to cover them. It is true, indeed, that the pressure is not so severely felt by the lords of great domains – cannot indeed be so; for to the owner of £10,000 a-year the loss of one-fourth of his income – though it may oblige him to curtail his expenses in matters of external show, still leaves ample means for the gratification of his accustomed habits and tastes. But what comfort is it to the owner of a small estate, who is reduced to the necessity of selling it for what it will bring – perhaps for some such price as we see recorded in the transactions of the Encumbered Estates Court of Dublin – or to the farmer, who is preparing to carry his family and the remnant of his capital to some other land – or to the labourer, who finds his earnings cut down to 6s. 6d. a-week – what consolation is it to men so circumstanced, that the policy which has caused their ruin may possibly enable the great territorial lords to retain their overgrown estates, and the privileges of their order, "for some generations to come?" Mr Laing, observe, does not venture to anticipate more than a respite for them; and some will be disposed to doubt whether even their permanent safety, and the perpetuation of their rights, would not be too dearly purchased at the price we are now paying for it in the ruin of a far more numerous, and perhaps not less valuable, class of the community. We have often had occasion to express our opinion as to the alleged crisis of 1846, which is said to have been so opportunely averted – as well as to the principle which ought to animate a Government in meeting such difficulties. We are not of those who think the main business of a cabinet is to keep on good terms with "the agitator and hireling speech-maker," – and that he is the wisest minister who is most adroit in timing his concessions, and casting off his principles at the moment they become inconvenient. Any seeming tranquillity, any truce with the enemies of constitutional order purchased by such a policy, can never be otherwise than temporary and precarious, because, it is insincere – insincere on both sides – a hollow compromise between principle and the expediency of the hour.

When we look to the reasons Mr Laing gives for the opinion we have been commenting on, they will be found to hang together rather loosely. They pre-suppose that agitation de rebus frumentariis, and specially the agitation of the League, could only proceed from the pressure of want. Now, the very week that the Bill passed, the price of wheat was 52s. 2d. – which, curiously enough, is the exact sum fixed on by Mr Wilson as the natural price of wheat in England. At that time beef was selling in London at 7s. 3d. a stone. The corn averages for the whole previous year were a fraction over 49s. 6d. The average of the ten previous years was 56s. 6d., which, by another strange coincidence, corresponds to a sixpence with the price admitted by Sir Robert Peel. With such rates of the chief articles of subsistence, how can it be said that scarcity was the cause of the Corn-Law agitation? The idea of famishing millions imploring bread may have been an appropriate figure of speech in the rabid cantations of an Ebenezer Elliot; but who seriously believes that the cry of "abolition" was the voice of a starving people, and not the mere watchword of a faction? Scarcity was only the pretext for the clamour before which the Government yielded; and is there any one weak or sanguine enough to believe that, by removing that pretext, and yielding to that clamour, we have silenced the voice of discontent, and ruined the trade of the demagogue? Is agrarian agitation no longer possible? Can we shut our eyes to what is even now passing in the north of Ireland? The fire which we are told was finally extinguished in 1846, has reappeared in that quarter, and already the sparks from it are kindling up in other parts of the empire. The demand for what is called "fixity of tenure" is but the germ of a new agitation, the future phases of which, unless it shall be met in a very different spirit from that which has characterised our recent policy, it is not difficult to foresee. It will become the new rallying point of disaffection – the centre of inflammatory action. The old machinery of the League will be set up anew, and the passions of the people will again be excited by a course of studious and systematic irritation. Ministers will hesitate, deprecate, and dally with the difficulty; rival statesmen will by turns fan the flame, or feebly resist it, as suits the party tactics of the day; until, at length, some one more yielding or less scrupulous than his competitors, will discover that the demand is founded on justice and sound policy – will concede all that is asked of him, and finally will turn round complacently and claim the gratitude of his country for having saved it from a revolution.

Our view, then, of this vindication of abolition, on the ground that it has averted a social convulsion, is briefly this. The discontent which then prevailed was not, as it pretended to be, the consequence of scarcity and dearness of provisions, or of any real grievance, but was in truth produced and fostered by artificial influences, which may at any time be again called into action. The spirit of agitation which then found a convenient pretext in the corn duties, will not fail to find an equally fit handle to lay hold of on the next favourable opportunity; and it is vain, therefore, to hope that we have purchased by our concessions a lasting immunity from disturbance, or any enduring guarantee for the safety of property on its present basis. It is on grounds of justice, and not of mere statecraft, that so great a question must be argued. Had the corn-laws been founded on injustice and partiality, that surely was in itself an ample and all-sufficient reason for sweeping them away. But if, on the contrary, they were productive of no such injustice to the people at large – if equity, as well as the implied guarantee of a long succession of laws, demanded an adherence to their principle as a partial compensation for the disproportionate burdens we have imposed on the land – then the allegation that their maintenance might have produced a popular outbreak, is, after all, but a feeble and ambiguous defence for the Ministry who so readily surrendered them. The coup d'état which we are now asked to applaud as the crowning act of Conservative wisdom, sinks into a mere wily evasion of a difficulty by giving over the interests of the weaker party as a peace-offering to the more clamorous – a sacrifice of established rights to the "civium ardor prava jubentium."

It is quite true, as Mr Laing tells us, that there exists a very large reserve of available land in Great Britain – a reserve quite sufficient, under proper management, to maintain our population for centuries to come, even at its present large ratio of increase. But that there is no similar reserve on the Continent, we beg leave to doubt. The statement may be true as regards those districts to whose condition Mr Laing has paid most attention. It may be true of France, and the peasant-cultivated parts of West Prussia, and the North of Germany; but can we say that the countries watered by the Vistula, the Bug, the Dniester – can we say that Livonia, Volhynia, Podolia – that those vast districts whose produce reaches us through Odessa, (whence it was shipped to England last winter, at a freight of 6s. a-quarter,) are already cultivated up to the full measure of their capabilities? The following comparative statement of the proportion which the cultivated land bears to the superficial extent of the different countries of Europe, is taken from the Annuaire Statistique for 1850: —

1The estimate for this country is clearly too small. Out of one hundred acres in England, seventy-eight are under cultivation, or in meadow. For the British Islands, the proportion is about sixty-four to one hundred. As to the extent of uncultivated but available land in Prussia, see the Evidence of Mr Banfield before the Committee of the House of Lords on Burdens affecting Land.

Unless we assume, (which we have no right to do,) that the extent of irreclaimable mountain, marsh, and sand, is much greater in proportion to the area of Belgium, Prussia, and Germany, the countries chiefly referred to by Mr Laing, than it is in Britain, we apprehend that their reserve is, to say the least, considerably larger than ours. We must notice also, that our author seems to regard the unreclaimed land of Britain as if it were a fund on which we can fall back at any time, when unfavourable harvests abroad shall have curtailed our accustomed supplies from the countries of the Continent. But a little consideration will show that, after we have once learnt to trust to annual foreign supplies, it is utterly vain to expect that their occasional deficiency will be supplemented, in case of emergency, from our own spare resources. Land is not like the instruments of production employed by the manufacturer. People talk of having recourse to our less fertile soils, as if it were a matter as easily and speedily accomplished as setting a mill in motion by raising the sluice. But the ponderous machine of agriculture is not so easily set a-going. On unreclaimed soils, an expenditure of from £12 to £25 an acre is required at the very outset. Fences and houses have to be erected, roads and drains to be formed, roots to be grubbed up, stones to be removed, before even the seed can be placed in the ground. Taking the farmer's capital into account, we are probably within the mark when we assert that £26 an acre, on the average, must be laid out on new land, before a single bushel can be reaped from it; and, even when ready for a rotation, an additional preparation of two or three years is necessary to bring it into a state for bearing wheat. Now, is there any speculator so insane as to risk such an expenditure on the possible chance of an occasional and simultaneous failure of the crops on the Continent? Even if grain were at a famine price, will any one be found to throw away his money in ploughing up "lawns, woods, shrubberies, village greens, and waste corners," when the very next season may see our ports swarming as usual with foreign grain ships, and "buyers firm" at 35s. a quarter?

A bad harvest is not an event that can be foreseen, and provided against, in the same way that the thrifty housekeeper lays in an additional stock of fuel, when there is talk of a strike among the colliers. The calamity is upon us long before the most skilful and far-sighted husbandman can arrange his plans and modify his rotations for the purpose of meeting the emergency. It is out of the question, then, under the present system at least, to talk of our spare land as if it were a spare coach-horse, or a spare pair of breeches, ready for use at any moment. We have taken away the only incitement to improvement, by taking care that it shall never be profitable. We have dammed back from our own fields that fertilising stream which is now spreading over and enriching the land of our neighbours. And now that we have chosen to throw ourselves on the resources of other nations – now that we may say, as the Romans did in the days of Claudian, "pascimur arbitrio Mauri" – we must not wonder if occasionally the supply turns out to be insufficient. We do not apprehend that a general scarcity can be of very frequent occurrence; but of this we may rest assured, that when it does happen, there is no portion of Europe in which the scourge of famine will be so severely felt as in this island, and it will then be utterly vain to look for relief from an expansion of that native agriculture which we have been at such pains to cripple and discourage.

We should convey to our readers a very incorrect notion of Mr Laing's work, if we led them to believe that it is wholly occupied with such subjects as we have been discussing. The commercial, military, and administrative systems of European governments certainly form his most important themes; but his remarks on the arts, customs, and literature of those countries are always amusing, and uttered with a straightforward and fearless disregard of what other people have said upon the same topic. He has no respect for conventional opinions in matters of taste; and he avows an English preference for the solid utilities and material comforts of everyday life over mere ornament. In fact, his views on the fine arts generally, are, to say the least, rather peculiar. The art of fresco-painting seems somehow to excite his bile more than anything else. His aversion to it is as intense and contemptuous as that with which Cobbett regarded the opera. It is clear to us that his digestive organs must have been fearfully disordered during his visit to Munich. From the Pinakothek to the spittoons in the Hall of the Graces, nothing seems to have pleased him – all is tawdry hollow, and out of place – and that æsthetic refinement which the ex-king of Bavaria took under his especial protection is, in his eyes, opposed to all common sense and true civilisation. We cannot join him in regarding the art of the upholsterer as more important than that of the sculptor, or in thinking the possession of hearth-rugs and window-curtains, and plenty of earthenware utensils, truer tests of national civilisation than libraries and picture-galleries. But, to a certain extent, we are disposed to share in his distrust of the genuineness of that progress in art which depends on Government encouragement. The taste which is reared and stimulated in the artificial air of palaces, instead of attaining a healthy and vigorous development, often yields little fruit except empty mannerisms. And, if the labours of the painter and the sculptor be apt to take a questionable direction under courtly tutelage, there is still more room to doubt whether any important progress in manufactures, or the mechanical arts, can be prompted by princely patronage, however well designed. We have already had proof in England of what enterprise and ingenuity can accomplish without such aid – it remains to be seen what advancement they are to make in the leading-strings of court favour, and under the inspiration of puffs in the Times newspaper, and promises of medals, with suitable inscriptions, and the bustling exertions of a semi-official staff of attachés.

Notwithstanding his heretical notions about the value of the fine arts, in a national point of view, Mr Laing's pictures of Continental life and scenery, and his criticisms on foreign manners and customs, will be found full of information and instruction, even by those who have resided for years in the countries he describes.

WHO ROLLED THE POWDER IN?

A LAY OF THE GUNPOWDER PLOT

["Upon this the conversation dropped, and soon afterwards Tresham departed. When he found himself alone, he suffered his rage to find vent in words. 'Perdition seize them!' he cried: 'I shall now lose two thousand pounds, in addition to what I have already advanced; and, as Mounteagle will not have the disclosure made till the beginning of November, there is no way of avoiding payment. They would not fall into the snare I laid to throw the blame of the discovery, when it takes place, upon their own indiscretion. But I must devise some other plan.'" – Ainsworth's Life and Times of Guy Fawkes.]

They've done their task, and every cask
Is piled within the cell: