ENGLISH FARMING AS A TRADE.

Southland Times, Volume III, Issue 45, 19 February 1864, Page 3

ENGLISH FARMING AS A TRADE.

(From tho Saturday Review.)

The rapidly-increasing depopulation of Ireland is rendering the question of the profitableness of agriculture, as an investment of capital more than ever interesting to those who have studied the sources of national wealth aud strength. When the mischiefs wrought by priests,, parsons and politicians upon the impulsive and helpless Celtic nature have come to their, natural end, and Ireland possesses no larger a population -than London aud its suburbs, people will begin to ask seriously what is to be done with the land that the emigrants haA T e left behind them. English eapital and English energy, it is at. present assumed, will immediately be brought into play. The surplus peasantry of England .will simply cross the Irish Channel instead of the- Atlantic, and large fortunes Avill be made by Britons Avhere Irishmen found only poverty and ruin. As the evil day seems hastening on apace, it is perhaps not too soon to inquire a little in detail as to the probability of this rush of English ancl Scotch capitalists eager to turn from their accustomed methods ofi making money into the untried fields J of Irish agriculture. The dream is so pleasant that it is certain to find many believers in its reality. There is something so captivating in the notion of exterminating Popery and making one's fortune by the same process, that nothing but a clear exposition of the obstacles in the Avay of the scheme Avill suffice .to prove its Adsionary character. These obstacles may be summed up in one short phrase.Panning in Ireland will not pay the capitalists in the same proportion in Avnieh ordinary business investments pay in England. It will not pay in Ireland because it does not pay in England. Agriculture is the Avorst of all trades and manufactures as a means of making money, and, therefore, will never be adopted, by that English and , Scottish policy Avhich is neA'er content to make ten per cent. Avhen twelve per ceut. is a possibility. lii the first place, Englich agriculture is not a largely profitable business because its laws and' conditions of success are not yet determined Avith an v certain accuracy. Though the oldest business in the Avordd, it is yet, as au art, founded ou tho experimental knowledge of natural law*, absolutely in its infancy. It is practised, moreover, by a class of men in certain resspects unlike those Avho are devoted to any other kind of trade, and at the same time not of a description to conciliate the confidence of the cautious man of business. It is the A r ery paradise of dogmatists, enthusiasts, and slow-coaches, Avherein they disport themselves to vegetate, each after his kind. Other manufactures seem to be carried on by persons exhibiting more or less one definite type. Cotton lords aud iron-masters, paper-makers and gun- makers, and all the endless variety of men Avho fabricate tho goods they wish to sell, seem to proceed steadily* by one ascertained set of rules — advancing, when they advance, on a sure foundation of experience, and standing still, when they do stand still, from no dull or dogged disbelief in any virtues but those of their great-grandfathers and grandmothers. In the agriculture of to-day, on the other hand, all is to a certain extent confusion. The whole business, so far as it adA r anees, like the art of medicine, is made up of little better than a series of tentative processes. Persons who converse much A-vith doctors, or read tho medical journals, are aware that overy year has its new and fashionable drugs, its iiew and infallible treatments of old complaints, and its astonishing discoveries as to the rationale of disease. One doctor's experience flatly contradicts that of another. One finds the marvellous potency of the remedies of which he hears such Avonders to be a dream. And just so in the cultivation of our fields. Every country has its infallible recipe for doubling crops, for economy in manure, for fattening beasts, and for filling the milk-pail. The fart is, we know very little more of the land avo tread on, than of the bodies Aye carry about with us. In each case our knowledge is so partial that Aye can never be sure that Aye are repeating a successful experiment under precisely similar conditions. Every field has its " idiosyncracies," and refuses to do what the deductions of chemists say it ought to do, and will do, and must. You never can tell Avhat effect will be produced on a man's constitution by auy physic, until it is tried. We have heard of quinine producing 3io effect whatever except a violent eruption on the face. And just so you can never foretell what a field will grow best, what succession of crops it likes, or Avhat manure it wants, except by long trial of every detail. Who could have guessed beforehand that the very best place in all England for growing lavender is the neighborhood of Mitcham, in Surrey ? Tour learned societies, your farming clubs, your agricultural journals, and, still more, your enthusiastic newspaper letterwriters, fill you with the results of other men's experience in cases apparently similar to your own ; but the moment you try to profit by your information, you find you have got to make all the experiments over again for yourself, and probably will have to modify every single conclusion at which other persons have arrived. No wonder then that, where so much is uncertain, steadiness and caution so often degenerate into dulness and bigotry, that the hopeful and energetic ! so often run wild in experimentalizing, : and that every conceited dogmatist : imagines that farmers have but to I accept his nostrum in order to double

their crops and halve their outgoings. Other 'peculiaritiesin the agricultural business tend to'increase the operation of the disturbing causes we have specified. Eor instance, it is the only trade Avhich\a "gentleman" will wiHingly follow. Eor any other manufacture to be "gentlemanly," it must be carried .' on upon a vast scale. , The great London breAvers are of one social rank; the little country beer-makers are emphatically of another. A, marquis or an earl sells coals in Durham, without derogation to the dignity ofthe peerage; but his trade has no sort of kinship with the business of a petty dealer in coals in the back street of the suburbs. Coals must be sold by hundreds jof tons in order that the dealer's fingera may be white. In agriculture it is all. different. A man may produce and sell wheat and turnips, pigs and j)otatoes, in infinitesimally small quantities, send them to market, or personally haggle about the price, and be a companion for kings and princes notwithstanding. Nay, the very kings and princes themselves may send their porkers to the butcher, and, if they can, make a profit by the transaction, j Hence, hundreds of ardent gentlemen Avith more money than prudence, and more zeal than experience, enter into the farming trade, and galvanise the torpid bucolic mind into something like a love for progress, aud a belief in chemical laws. SAveet are the rankest ammoniacle odors in nostrils that would dilate only with contempt at the scent of calicoes ; and delicately-preserved hands Avill nestle amid the weU-coA^ered ribs of a toav of bullocks which would as soon handle a scavenger's broom as a packet of hardware in a shop. At the same time it ought never to be forgotten that it is to the natural inborn taste which man has for agriculture, as distinct from every other means of making money, that English farming at the present moment owes its best chance of keeping its place among profitable occupations. But for zeal, the expenditure, and the uncalculating experimentalising of English gentlemen and noblemen farming on theh- OAvn account and intending to make profit thereby, the agriculture of this country would be in almost expiring state. If dukes did not love to trade in sheep, and coA r et piu-zes for their fat oxen, that AAdiole social organization Avhich gives its life to the farming world Avould never have been created. The conditions of agriculture are unfortunately such that Avere it not for this natural passion for cultivating the land, farming would attract to itself even less than it does of that combination of hardheadedness and capital Avhich lies of manufacturing and commercial life. Chief among these unfavorable conditions is the fixed extent of the land the farmer rents. Whether Aye regard the soil as his raAV material, or as his machinery and_ " plant," by its limitation in quantity it places the manufacturer of grain and meat in a position of special disadvantage. Whatever the demands of the farming interest, the extent of the land remains- unchanged. The farmer is forced to compete with his felloAvs for the purchase of an article Avhich by no possibility can be brought under the grand maxim of political economy Avhich asserts that supply Avill follow demand. By this competition the landoAvner alone is benefitted. Hence, Avhile rents continually rise and must go on rising, farming profits stand still or actually diminish. Then, again, the farmer is compelled to complete all his outlay without the slightest knowledge of the probable condition of the market Avhen his produce is ready for sale. All other manufactured articles are, to a great extent, prepared to order. The customer is usually ensured beforehand, and a price agreed upon. If the market is glutted, it is by the voluntary act of the producer, avlio can limit or extend his manufacture at his oavii discretion. But the farmer can do nothing of the kind. He aims at the most possible produce, but the chances ofthe seasons, and of disease among his herds and flocks, defy all calculations, and Avhen he has done his best he must take liis ehanee o£ tlie prices his goods Avill fetch. A fortnight's high wind at blossoming time will cut off thirty, forty, or fifty per cent, of his corn crops, while the gales that devastate his fields are perhaps unfelt in the countries Avhose produce Avill flood the market after harvest. Just now, indeed, there is in some quarters a groAving notion that the English farmer should cease to look to his wheat for profit, and think only of his bullocks and his sheep. Doubtless, just now, meat is dear and Avheat is cheap, but this is only the result of those combinations oi' circumstances which it is impossible to foresee. As a rule, nothing pays worse, in corngrowing districts, than the manufacture of beef. There is an old farming proverb, that he avlio fats many bullocks will never need to make a Avill. We have before us the published experience of one of the best and most scientific Gloucestershire agriculturists avlio positively prides himself on sometimes clearing a- sovereign or so upon the sale of a fatted beast. It is not forgotten, by those Avho are all for beef as against Avheat, that the Avhole of England does not consist of Lincoln- j shire and Somersetshirepastures. They might as reasonably ask why all Eng- ■ land does not make Cheshire or Cheddar cheese. Nor has the ordinary i reader any adequate idea of the extent to Avhich the flock is devastated by disease in unfavorable seasons. He reads of the large quantities of unwholesome food brought surreptitiously into the London market, and wonders, that the dealers can be such scoundrels as to sell it. But he is little aware"bf the temptation offered; to those who are brought to the verge of ruin by the

various complaints to which sheep are subject Everybody has heard of the '■''% "rot" in sheep, but how: many know that in tlje year 1830 ; upwards of "" ' 2,000,000 of sheep perished from that disease alone? Ten years ago the ', same scourge swept, -away immense humbers, both in the undrained and healthier districts. In the autumn and -.. -winter of 1860 the, deaths were again enormous. In many instances flockmasters near London lost 600 or 700 in a few weeks. One owner saved only 40 or 50 out of 800 e-wes. Lv Devonshire, and in the .sheep-feeding Surrey and Sussex farms, five-sixths .of the sheep and lambs were, in many cases, cut off. The same disease prevails on the Continent, fioin Norway to Spain, and has thinned many a flock in America and Australia as fatally as in Europe. ; In Egypt it is , said to destroy not less than 16,000 sheep every year. A further difficulty attends the fattening of , sheep; and , oxen forthe market, in the iaet /that, unless sold the moment they are ready, they begome straightway the cause of ,' "daily loss. An animal- that is ready for the butcher cannot, as a rule, be made to grow beyond the profitable - size once attained, to any such"Oxtent as will pay for its V additional keep. There is nothing like this in any other manufacture. G-oods unsold can. be retained by their owner for the chance of a better market. They cost nothing " to feed and tend ; but sheep and oxen f - not disposed of rapidly .eat: up every ; possible "farthing of profit froni their unlucky proprietor. :*'*.■ ;- -. '•'**'..' Such are some-- of the --obstacles which stand in the way- of "farming as a highly profitable trade; No doubt all manufactures are Subj ected- to certain parallel difficulties, but they are so in a far less degree. And the resultis only too clear. Long-headed business men never invest their capital in -agriculture with a view to insuring large - returns as interest for their money. It is true that they Work harder in " their several occupations than. the farming world. No money-makers Avork so feAv hours in the day, or spends so much of their time in gossippirig, in eating and drinking, in. driving about the country and pretending toy " transact business at markets, :as does the English farmer. But the Tact remains the same — that, while farming aIIoAVS a degree of personal liberty and a license in jollification to its votaries - A\ r hich Avould ruin any other manufac-^ turing or commercial men, all the austerity and toils of the ordinary trader AvOuld fail- to drive up the interest on invested capital to a figure more tempting in the eyes of those: whose rule of life is to buy in the; cheapest and to sell in the dearest market.