six or eight acres each. This comprehends the whole land of the village, except small gardens attached to the dwellings of the labourers. This division of the land endures from generation to generation; it is scarcely ever altered; no new farms are created, and the old ones are scarcely ever augmented or diminished in extent. We believe the farmers would be the first to protest against subdivision, even though it might be meant for the benefit of their own children. They know, that, however moderate rents may be, a man must occupy at least two hundred acres of reasonably good land to be enabled to live comfortably, and to save a little money. While, therefore, the English farmer wishes one of his sons to occupy his farm after him, he never dreams of its being divided between two of them. The population of the village consists chiefly of the farmers and their families, the schoolmaster, butcher, innkeeper, grocer, tailor, shoemaker, carpenter, blacksmith, and their families, and as many labourers as the farmers, in pretty good times, can employ, and their families. No new farm is ever formed, an additional cottage is scarcely ever built, an additional family scarcely ever comes, and the population-returns show that the population of this village rarely varies in number. In regard to rents, there are, as we have already said, no middle-men; there are no agents empowered to demand any rent they please, and incited to exact the highest by being paid by a per-centage. The rent is, in the first instance, fixed, not by competition, but by the general rate of rents, which is commonly moderate, and which, on the estates of great landholders, is extremely moderate. The new tenant of one of these landholders is placed on an equality with the old ones, although his farm would perhaps fetch double the rent, if let by competition. The rent thus fixed is rarely raised, except from a great and continued rise in the markets, and then the advance is small compared with that of produce. This applies principally to the estates of the great and middling landholders; there are many single farms, which are let at Rack-rent. We give the following description of Land-letting in Ireland, from the evidence lately given before Parlia ment: From the evidence of F. Blackburne, Esq., one of the King's Counsel appointed to administer the Insurrection Act in the county of Limerick. "The population of the parts of the country where insurrections were most prevalent, is extremely dense. The property is greatly subdivided, and the condition of the lower orders of the people is more miserable than I can describe it. The great increase of people, with other causes which I shall advert to more particularly, had raised the rents of land in that part to a degree that was perfectly exorbitant. Laud in that country, which is totally destitute of manufactures, ap. pears to me to have become (if I may use the expression) a necessary of life. The common mode of livelihood speculated upon in that country, is the taking of land; of course, in proportion as the population multiplied, the demand for land increased; and that combined with the extravagant prices of all species of agricultural produce, had raised land to a price beyond anything which we can call its intrinsic value. The subdivision of land was also produced by speculations of a political kind; the consequence of this was, that land appeared to me to stand, generally speaking, at a rent which it was impossible for the tenant at any time to pay, reserving the means of decent subsistence. "Is the peasant an occupier of land in general? "Generally, I believe, he is, and to a The whole of his very small amount. tenement is generally in tillage; the greater part of it is occupied in the growing of grain of some kind; part of it is occupied in producing potatoes, and these potatoes form his sole support. I was credibly informed, that in general the lower orders have not milk. The corn is, of course, sold; the peasant generally has a pig or two, and a few fowls. The rent is paid by the grain, the price of the pig, and the eggs and fowls which are reared about the house; and I believe, generally speaking, that the peasant never eats a morsel of bread from the beginning to the end of the year. They scarcely ever have any bedding except straw; and it appears to me that the family are huddled together without any distinction of age or sex, and often with scarcely anything to cover them. "How do they cultivate land? "They cultivate the land by the members of the family, who are quite sufficient to cultivate it in the way in which they are accustomed to cultivate it. As to implements of husbandry, the occupiers of these small tenements in general have none; the plough and harrow are usually borrowed for the occasion. "Is it your opinion, or is it not, that the rents, at present reserved in that part of the country (Limerick,) are exorbitant rents? "I believe the rents are a great deal too high, and such as the vast population upon it cannot afford to pay, and subsist themselves in decency and comfort. "Will you state whether it has come to your knowledge that the practice, generally speaking, is for absentee landlords, in directing their agents to collect money, for the agents to be paid at a per-centage upon the collection? "I believe that the agents are generally paid by a per-centage. "Then it becomes the interest of the agent to collect as much as possible from the tenantry? "So it would appear. "The system of middle-men is not much more prevalent upon absentees' estates than upon those of residents? "I believe it is. "Do you conceive that the rent of the occupying peasant is much diminished by holding directly from the principal proprietor, instead of from the middle-man ? "I should think it is." From the evidence of Maxwell Blacker, Esq., King's Counsel in Ireland. "Generally speaking, before the eviction of the interests of the middle-men, how many middle-men generally intervened between you and the actual occupiers of the soil in any particular place? "I do not think I could state that completely. "Was it frequently the case that there were three or four? "Yes. "Can you give the Committee any general idea of the ratio of rents you have observed in these instances, as compared with those they had been in the habit of paying to the middle-men, before you ejec ted those middle-men? “They paid considerable profit to the middle-men; for instance, if the middleman paid me L.500 a-year, he expected to get between L.700 and L.800 a-year from his tenants. When I ejected the middle-man who paid me L.500 a-year, I took at first the L.500, and afterwards they complained it was too much; and not being a judge myself, nor living in the country, I consulted gentlemen there as to what the value was, and I then reduced it probably to L.400, so that I got less from the occupying tenants than the middle-men before had been able to pay me during the war time. "Were the middle-men who paid you the rent generally actually resident in the country? "I believe some were, and some were not; I do not know which would form the majority. "Have you any doubt that the middle-man, who was the lowest in the series, and in immediate communication with the tenant, exacted from them the utmost possible shilling that he could? "I have no doubt about it. "Supposing you allowed the middleman to run into arrear three or four years, might it not so happen, that he had previously distrained on the person on whom you actually distrained? "It often did. "So that where there were three intervening tenants, the immediate occupier might have had four distresses? "He might. "It would be very satisfactory for the information of those who are unacquainted with the circumstances of Ireland, if you would state the manner in which the number of tenants becomes multiplied, and the land subdivided, without the permission of the proprietor of the soil. "Whenever a tenant gets a farm, if he has a family, as he generally has, the farm is subdivided amongst his children; generally the sons get a share, and often daughters, when they get husbands, get a portion of the land; and, in like manner, it goes on, those sons' sons come and require provision, and it is subdivi ded again amongst them." Major G. Warburton states in his evidence, that in the county of Clare, the peasantry, the actual cultivators, occupy on the average from one to two acres; he represents them to be in the lowest state of wretchedness. whether we look at the occupier, the A more horrible system than this, landlord, the government, or the country, could not be imagined. It is extraordinary that such a mode of letting should have got allied with such a mode of subdividing, to scourge the same people. Either would alone have been a sufficient plague. It is easy to see that some of the questions were meant to elicit from those who gave evidence a defence of the middle-men. Certain of the political economists have long been the champions of these middle-men, and have called all that has been said against them idle prejudice. These persons retain their opinions in the face of this evidence, and of course the middle-men have champions still. Political economy is an odd science. Burke said most truly of farming"The trade is a very poor trade; it is subject to great risks and losses. The capital, such as it is, is turned but once in the year; in some branches it requires three years before the money is paid."-" It is very rare that the most prosperous farmer, counting the value of his quick and dead stock, the interest of the money he turns, together with his own wages as a bailiff or overseer, ever does make twelve or fifteen per centum on his capital."-" The trade of a farmer is, as I have before explained, one of the most precarious in its advantages, the most liable to losses, and the least profitable of any that is carried on. It requires ten times more of labour, of attention, of skill, and, let me add, of good fortune also, to carry on the business of a farmer with success, than what belongs to any other trade." This, notwithstanding the time that has elapsed since it was written, is still most applicable to the trade of the farmer. The political economists occasionally raise an immense outcry because the land in this country belongs to a comparatively few people. They cannot endure the law of primogeniture and entails; a very large estate they regard as an abomination. Oh! they exclaim, that the land were divided and owned, in small lots, by the peasantry! What abundance and happiness would every family draw from its five, ten, fifteen, twenty, or thirty acres! Here, as in too many other cases, these economists attack one of the main pillars of England's prosperity. We do not quarrel with these people because they are theorists, although we venerate very highly practical men, but we quarrel with them because they build upon erroneous theory, because they reason from assumptions which are perfectly false. If a tradesman begin business in a town, he can only buy and sell at the market price; he must have business sufficient to employ him, and his sales must reach a certain amount, or he must starve. So a farmer must not only occupy land, but he must occupy a certain extent of land, to obtain a VOL. XVII. sufficiency of bread. He must have as much as will employ him, and enable him to keep a couple of horses to draw his plough: he must have at least forty or fifty acres. If a man buy and occupy fifty acres of land, the price and the capital necessary for cultivating it amount to perhaps from 1500 to 2000 pounds. Such a capital, in most cases, would enable the tradesman to fare sumptuously, and to realise a handsome fortune; but he who vests it in land must work as hard as a labourer, he must taste no delicacies, he must have no wine, he must very seldom sip spiritous liquors, and honest John Barleycorn must only reach his lips as a rarity; he must provide his family only with plain, homely food and clothing, or he cannot maintain the balance between income and expenditure. If he save a little money for his children, he must deprive himself of everything save the plainest necessaries. If a man occupy fifty acres at a moderate rent, saving is out of the question; and the best that he can look for is, a very scanty maintenance for himself and his family. If a man own and occupy ten, twenty, or even thirty acres of tillage land, it will do little more than half employ him; it will not enable him to keep horses to work it, and it will not support him. If he be willing to work as a labourer when it does not call, for his attention, he can perhaps procure no employment; he is, however, generally too proud to do this, and therefore he degenerates into an idle sloven. He sinks into penury, and mortgages by little and little, until at last his land slips from his fingers. If a husbandry labourer, in England, have twenty or thirty acres of arable land bequeathed to him, he seldom thinks of occupying it himself, because he knows it will not afford him a livelihood. He sells or mortgages it, and takes a good-sized farm with the money. As to merely occupying so small a quantity, without any other employment, it is not to be thought of. The small parcels of land in our villages are therefore, almost always, occupied by the tradesman-by the innkeeper, the butcher, &c. The trade and the land together furnish that livelihood which neither could furnish singly. In speaking of the agricultural population of England, it must always be 4 U remembered that it cannot subsist, like that of other countries, on rye or barley bread, roots, and vegetables; it must have a sufficiency of wheaten bread, beef, and bacon. The morsel of land, therefore, which would maintain the agriculturist of another country, would starve the English one. If the economists would only begin, as they ought, at the beginning,-if they would use arithmetic a little more, and rhetoric a little less,-if they would calculate how much a family must expend in food and raiment, how much labour a certain number of acres will employ-and how much profit these acres will yield-they would not blunder as they do. As matters are, many of them speak as though the farmer's clods could be changed into gold and silver at pleasure, as though a man can never want work, money, or bread, if he only possess a few acres of land. If the land of England were divided among the peasants in lots of two, five, ten, fifteen, twenty, and thirty acres each, it would be prodigiously overpeopled; it would not do more than half employ its population; there could be no accumulation of capital; it would not supply the occupiers with necessaries; at every death, the land, if not entailed, would have to be sold, or subdivided into acre and half-acre, allotments for the benefit of the deceased's children. There would be none able to buy save the larger proprietors and the rich traders, and these would buy to again form large estates. If the land were thus divided to-morrow, the mass of the peasantry would sell their allotments the day after, if they could only take good-sized farms at a moderate rent with the money. They would do this from the knowledge, that if they occupied their portions they would starve, and that if they rented good farms they would live comfortably and save. Nothing could be more absurd than the clamour which has often been got up in late years, by ignorant people, because the small proprietors and occupiers melted away, and their land passed to large ones. The change was a very natural and beneficial one; it resulted from the increase of capital and knowledge. The small proprie tor saw that it was more profitable to be the tenant only of a large farm, than to be both owner and occupier of a small one, therefore he sold ; the small occupier saw that it was more profitable to occupy much than a little; he could generally borrow money of his neighbours, and he therefore constantly laboured to increase his quantity of land. The small proprietors thus sold; the small occupiers abandoned, to obtain good-sized farms; the death of either threw their land upon the market, from the inability of their children to retain it; both owners and occupiers saw that it was their interest to divide the land into farms of good magnitude, therefore it was thus divided. The present division of land in England is, we think, the best one possible; it preserves the land from being overstocked with inhabitants; it cultivates it in the best manner, with the least number of hands; it keeps, generally speaking, the population fully and regularly employed; it extracts from the soil the greatest quantity of produce at the least cost. It is the most beneficial one to landlord, farmer, and labourer, but, at any rate, to the two latter. Land, in this country, from reasons which must be obvious to all, pays far less interest than any other description of property. This has an inevitable tendency to form it into large masses, and throw it principally into the hands of rich men, in respect of ownership. A little of it absorbs a large capital, and returns scarcely any income. Few but rich men think of investing their money in it, and none but rich men can afford to let good farms. Our land belongs, in a considerable degree, to a comparatively few individuals, whose estates and incomes are enormous; and this forms the chief source of the prosperity of Britain's agriculture. It is principally owing to this that the country abounds with agricultural capital, that it possesses a numerous, intelligent, and respectable yeomanry, that its village-traders and country towns flourish, and that its husbandry labourers generally live as well as the farmers of most other countries. The land of some of these individuals only pays one and a half, or two per cent. upon its value. None but men of immense fortune could afford to let land, or, in other words, to lend money at so low a rate, could resist the temptations that continually surround them to raise their rents, and would sacrifice their own incomes to benefit their tenantry. The greatest proprietor is commonly the best, and the smallest the worst, landlord. The owner of one hundred farms lets very good ones; the owner of fifty lets moderately good ones; the owner of ten allows his tenants to live comfortably; and the owner of one generally hungers, and often ruins the occupier. With us, 5000, 10,000, 15,000, 20,000, or 30,000 acres, have often only one landlord to support. A trifling rent will therefore supply him with a princely income. The case would be widely different if every 300 or 1000 acres had to support a separate landlord; most rents would then be doubled, and the increase in them would be taken from the incomes of the farmers and their labourers. A farm of 300 acres, now, has perhaps to contribute only one-fiftieth part of the landlord's revenue: if it be in tillage, and do not consist of very strong land, seven horses, and six men and boys, with the farmer, his wife, and a female servant, can work it, with the addition of a few extra hands in harvest. In cluding the farmer's family, and his labourers' families, perhaps, on the average, about fourteen men, women, and children, draw their support from its cultivation. If this farm were divided into lots of fifty acres each, twelve horses would be kept to work it, and it would have to support, on the average, about twenty-seven or thirty souls. If it were divided into lots averaging about twenty acres each, fifteen horses would be kept to cultivate it, and it would have to support from sixty to seventy souls. The probability is, that the subdivision would reduce the quantity of produce. The poverty of the occupiers would not permit them to purchase that manure which even our best lands call for, and which it now commonly gets. The trade of the farmer is the poorest of all trades, and it differs in almost every particular from all other trades. The tradesman of a town can always procure a shop, and, to a certain extent, command business; he can go round to solicit customers, and gain a connexion by underselling: as his capital increases, he can increase his business; if he have more than his retail trade requires, he can send out a traveller. But if the farmer want a farm he knows not where to look for it; if he procure one, the extent of his business is bounded by his number of acres: if his capital increase, he cannot employ the increase on his farm, he cannot obtain another rood, and therefore it adds little to his profits. The articles of the tradesman are seldom of a perishable character; those of the farmer are all so, and the risks are such as no wisdom and foresight can guard against. The tradesman can almost always obtain the same rate of profits: the farmer has little command over the market; and, however his rent or expenses may be increased, he cannot perhaps add anything to the price of his produce. The tradesman's business is his own; he can conceal his gains, and if it even be known that these amount to annual thousands, no one can interfere with him. But the farmer is always at the mercy of the landlord; this landlord can ascertain the amount of his profits, can raise his rent so as to deprive him of them, and can take from him his farm. If the tradesman be turned out of one shop, he can immediately take another equally valuable; but if the farmer be discharged, he is perhaps for years out of business before he can procure another farm, and then it must be one of those that are let by competition, and above their value. Farms are generally so scarce that a farmer will submit to any advance of rent that will not starve and ruin him, rather than quit. A tradesman who has business for a capital of twelve hundred pounds, clothes himself and his family in the best; he gives wages to his shopman that enable him to appear as a gentleman; he has frequently costly par ties; he keeps an excellent table, and consumes much malt liquor, a good deal of spiritous liquors, and no little wine. He nevertheless saves three hundred per annum, and often more; his profits and savings annually increase. If a farmer occupy three hundred acres, they require a capital of twelve hundred pounds. He does not expend one-fourth of what the tradesman expends in dress, visitors, liquors, &c. and yet he thinks himself fortunate if he can save, in a term of years, about one hundred or one hundred and fifty pounds per annum. If he lived like the tradesman, he would scarcely save a penny. Were he both owner and occupier of the farm, he would have twelve or fourteen thou |
