MR BRIGHT ON AGRICULTURE.

Waikato Times, Volume XVIII, Issue 1504, 23 February 1882, Page 3

MR BRIGHT ON AGRICULTURE.

At Rochdale, recently, the Right Hon. John Bright, M.P., said — We must not shut our eyes to the fact that the fanners of this country, to a very largo extent, have heen suffering grievously during the last two or three years ; in fact, I think their sufferings may be dated even further back than that. Their rents have been very big. These rents were fixed upon the supposition that the seasons were always good and the prices are always moderately or sufficiently high. Now, we know, and the farmers know, that seasons are not always good. The ancient remedy when seasons were bad was to keep out the foreign com till the home grown rose so high that the farmer made more money with a short crop than with a good crop. The ancient remedy for short crops is gone, and gone for ever. There is no longer to be scarcity and high prices to cover the unproductiveness of the seasons. We have had now for several years small produce, crops under the average, and we have had at the same time moderate prices. What is, then, the remedy for this matter ? Some say you must have protection again. lii' reference to the proposal of a bounty on home-grown wheat, Mr Bright said :— The thing is so absurd and so preposterous that one is only astonished that any man who is allowed to go without a keeper should ever have ! proposed it. Then others say that the tanners have a great grievance with the rates they have to pay. Well, we know that rates must be paid by somebody. Somebody must pay the poor lates, the highway iate, the education rate, and the county police rate. In these towns we pay rates too, and on the whole, I suspect, rather higher than the rates that are paid in the farming parishes. But we don't make quite so much clamour about it. The clamour comes from this cause — that the landowners are of opinion that if they can keep the farmers running upon the question of rates by way of relief, they will not be running in the direction of rent. Now, to show you the absurdity of this proposition, I would just ask you to look at this point. Suppose there were two parishes, or Wo estates, or two farms, and that in the one the rates were paid as at present by the tenant, and in the other there were no rates paid by the tenant at all, what would be the result ? The parish or the estate or the farm where there were no rates to pay would, as a matter of course, at the next letting, have its rent as much rai&ed as would come to the same sum as both rent and rates in the adjoining estate or the adjoining pari&h, and therefore that any reduction of rates which is made on the property must as a matter of course must go in the competition for farms, and must go to increase the rent the landlord, and therefore this is no remedy for the grievances of the farmer, whether it would be advisable or not. I think it would do to do as is done mainly in Scotland and Ii eland, viz. : that whatever the rates arc the landlord should pay one-half and the tenant the other. One very noted Norfolk agriculturalist, a great friend of the farmers, in whom they trust, said the other day that he did not believe any change that could be made in the matter of rates would make a difference of more than a shilling or eighteenpence an acre to the farmer, and therefore it is obvious that from this source there is no real relief to be given to the cultivators of the soil. The farmers' condition I hold, then, to be fixed in two lespects. First of all, he can never again have an unnatural price for his produce — an unnatuial price given by a protective statute ; and, secondly, the land cannot escape payment of rates. Now, there is another adverse condition which our friends the farmers suffer from — a good many people suffer from it,, but not exactly the way I mean — the want of more capital. The farmers, unfortunately, have farms about twice as large as the capital by which they cultivate them. His capital in only half what he requires, and his position is therefore one of embariassmeut, and if he comes upon bad times lie is very nearly ruined, and that is the condition of the majority of the farmers in this country — that whereas none of them ought to have less than £10 per acre, the majority of them have not more than one-half that sum, If they had more capital they might have better cultivation of the soil , more production, more stock, and by that they would be able to prevent some of the most adverse circumstances to which they are subjected. There is another question which workmen everywhere should learn to bear in mind. The labor in the agricultural districts was becoming more and more costly, whilst it was worse in quality, because the younger people, finding they had no tie to the soil, and that they can never become anything but laborers at very low wages, are leaving the rural parishes in which they have been born. They are emigrating to the countries across the ocean. The result is that our landed system, with its great estates and farms, out off the laborer almost entirely from the possibility of becoming either a tenant or an owner of the land, and as he lias no object in remaining there he goes away. This cannot be denied, that the laborer must live on the cultivation of the land — and more than that, the farmer must be paid for his businebs and for the capital, or he would fly from the land ; and if the tenant should cease to hold that land, what is to become of the landowner ? He is left high and dry — he cannot cultivate the land himself. So fajr he is forced, and must be forced— there is no escape— to make such arrangements with the tenant that the tenant can live, and the tenant must make such arrangements with the laborer that the laborer can live. But it comes to this, so far as I am able to judge, that unless by some means you can stimulate greatly the production of the soil by increased capital, increased skill, and increased industry, there is no remedy whatever for the recurring distress and embarrassed condition of the farmer, except by a great and permanent reduction of the landlord's rent,

A little sighing, a little crying, a little dying, and a great deal of lying constitute love. A shy young man of Scotland for fourteen years had wooed the lassie of his heart. One night Jamie, for that was the young man's name, called to see Jennie, and there was a terrible look about his eyes — just as there is sometimes when they've made up their minds to pop the question. And Jamie came in ami sat down by the fire just as he had done every Tuesday and Friday night for fourteen years, and he talked of the weather, and the cattle, and the crops, and the stock market, I was going to say — hut no, they didn't talk about that. And finally, Jamie said :— "l've known you for a long time." " Yes, 4 Jamie," she said. "And— l've thought I'd always like to know you, Jennie." • • Y-e-s — Jamie. " • c And solve bought — a lot — Jennie." " Y-e-s — J-a-m-i-e." " So— that — when — "_ •• YeB— Jamie — yes." "We're, dead' we can, 'lay oi\r bones together." The ' fogl liad go,ne arid bought a lqfc In a graveyard, ' ! but ' Jennie was' not discouraged. She. -knew; 'her man .well— after fourteen years'she ought to— and so she said gently : ''Jamie." "Yes, Jennie." 'J Don't- you think t'would be better to lay our 1 bones togetherwhile we're yob alive V