THE COLONIST.

Colonist, Volume III, Issue 242, 14 February 1860, Page 2

THE COLONIST.

NELSON, TUES DA V, FEBRUARY 14,1860.

The season of the year leads us to consider that most important occupation, (in all" countiies, agriculture—the health wealth, and success of a nation. And at a time when our barns are filled with the golden ears ot corn, and our rural population engaged in the many cheering occupations of the season, it may not be amiss for us to glance at what is done, can be done, and should be done, to-render the pursuit more remunerative, certain, and generally followed than it is. Politicians of all degrees, from, the Protectionist Peer to the Manchester Economise agree in the vital import ofthe subject as connected with the welfare of a countty, the well-being of society, and the success of a nation. Our adopted land may teem with minetal liches all. undeveloped, and still fast held in the bosom of their mother earth; but until the cultivation of the soil has received that attention which it deserves from the sons of Adam who fol'ow in their father's footsteps and occupation, no great progress can be expected in branches of industry which claim and seem intended to absorb the ever increasing stream of surplus population. Britain boasted of her agriculture, and owned a fr§§ and happy people long ere she was a mineral worked country. The developement of her mineral and manufacturing resources has best raised the standard of her agriculture and exalted her to that high position when the combinations of chemical, mechanical, botanical, and physical sciences are all called in to her assistance, and, work in that felicitous union which alone can command success of a high order. New Zealand, the Britain of the South, has in a few honored examples in farmers tried to aspire t,o an English standard and yet libw very much are the body of our agriculturists far behind the land of their birth. When we see a total disregard of the first law upon which nature yields her increase, that if not exhausting her bountiful productions, but nursing them and carefully returning lo her the rich compounds which the decaying growth of the past year, assisted by economy, placed at the farmer's disposal. When folly can see no better means of disposing of.straw than placing to it a lighted match and destroying the food of beasts which in due time should have replenished the exhausted soil. When the liquid and other manures are left to waste or be exhausted of all strength by exposure to the rays of a semi-tropical sun. When cattle are reared purely as a financial spec nlation, and not as one of the great, it not the greatest agency in the reproduction of suitable dressings to "enrich the fields, and their number proportional to the acreage of the farm and the amount of produce raised from it; so that a complete economy might exist, between production and consumption. We have not made these remarks in any way to damp the spirit of our agriculturists but to direct their thoughts into a channel from which we trust they may not only draw instruction, but profit. Nor are we forgetting the much to be deplored engagements under which too many in our own neighbourhood labor, and the ceaseless calls of the Land Agent which drive them in many instances to kill the goose which lays the golden eggs, by exhausting their farms with a series of cereal crops in the hope of meeting the dreaded demand for payments on account of purchase money. To these self-imposed Egyptian bondmen we can offer tittle advice, but to the independent, farmer we wish to point out the benefit which he would reap, and consequently the country, at large, from following the course we will briefly point out. That Agriculture should ever be looked upon as the most practical and certain of all occupations. That no undue exaction of her bountiful gifts can be obtained without injury to a future time. That her demands are as constant and unremitting as those of the human frame, and must be as regularly attended to and as strict a regimen laid down, and acted upon in the one case as the other. That nature is a thrifty housewife who permits no idleness, and tolerates no waste. That all her productions alter having passed through their several ramifications, and attained their object, must be returned to her again, and, that as with the human so with her; when great exertions are requited in the production of exhausting c-ops, due rega'd shall be had to the strength of the food she is to receive. That as change is ihe law of the universe, so change must be her law; and that by succession of crops, through replenishing by means of husbanding all sources of farm economy', she will be enabled in robust health and perpetual strength to repay the labor of her master, with the varied productions of h«.r prolific bounty. By patiently' following up the course we havp sketched out, a marked improvement in the productions of our soil would be brought about, with a freedom from those harassing demands or fearful depressions attendant on a scarcity or overplus of labor; and a greater certainty respecting the prices of produce would exist, from the fact of its being in the power of a farmer to consume on his land the greater portion of his crops, and the knowledge that a limited yet'sufficient supply of wheat, barley, &c, would ba" brought to market; ample for our wants, yet leaving too small a margin for speculators or covetous dealers to raise or depress its value. The benefit arising from this system would again

be felt, in the anti-speculative feeling certainty always produces, and the trqe conservative principles it engenders, the respect it induces for law and order, and the tone it reflects to society? that wonderful compound of all feelings, ideas, and ends. -