Chapter XIV (5)

I do not calculate the value of the horse and manual labour, which in the cultivation of potatoes is by no means trifling. Let that go to meet the seed potatoes reserved, and the unexhausted manure in the soil: and yet the factor at Auchness seems a loser in 1849, by his potato crop. And yet it is undeniable, nevertheless, in consequence of the extremely depreciated price of grain, that the sale even of this potato crop does add a _larger present return_ in money to the profit side of the Balance-sheet than a crop of wheat would have done. But as the potato, when sold off the farm, leaves no _pabulum_ for future manure, the prosperity is more apparent than real. Unless a much larger quantity than 400 tons, even at £3 per ton, can be raised on 92 acres, the crop must ultimately entail loss, which the Balance-sheet will not be able to conceal.

You sneer at Mr Gibson of Woolmet's potato cultivation. Why he, as you yourself stated the case, after allowing for manures, seed, and rent, left himself a profit of £15 on 50 acres of potatoes; while at Auchness, on 92 acres, as above shown, the profit, after allowing for manures, seed, and rent, is £281, 4s. _less than nothing_! Moreover, you keep out of sight that, on the four-course rotation of farming, which Mr Gibson must follow in the neighbourhood of a large town, it is not alone to the profit from the very expensively manured green crop of the first year that the farmer looks alone for a return of his outlay, but chiefly to that from the produce of the three succeeding years, which can be raised after the preparation the land has undergone for the green crop, without farther manuring. You are very violent about Mr Gibson's growing beans. Had you examined Mr Gibson's statements carefully, you would have perceived that the difference in the result, consequent on his substituting 25 acres of beans and turnips for the same quantity of land in potatoes, is only £31, 17s. 6d., instead of the much larger sum which you mention. Did you ever see Mr Gibson's farm of Woolmet? I have, and beg to inform you that I know no better specimen of well manured and highly cultivated land in the county of Mid-Lothian. There is no farmer in Scotland who has received so many prizes for the finest specimens of seed-corn of all kinds, from the Highland and other agricultural societies, as Mr Gibson. This is the gentleman whose farming you ignorantly sneer at.

But you are ready to abandon the peculiar position that you had taken up in reference to the exorbitant cultivation of the potato, and to meet your opponents upon their own ground, as you believe. "Suppose, however," you say, "that nature had, (as you asserted,) annihilated the potato, would Mr M'Culloch not be able to draw any other kind of produce from his 90 acres of highly manured land?" (p. 7.) Why, certainly not, in the same year. Had nature annihilated the potato at Auchness in 1849, Mr M'Culloch would have lost, by his own calculation, £1200, and could have had no other crop--unless, indeed, there be two summers at Auchness within the year. "Had these 90 acres been sown with wheat, they would, at Mr Stephens' own estimate, have produced no less than £810." Mr Stephens did not meditate growing wheat on the moss. Do you mean to say that you can grow wheat on the moss, and profitably, year after year in succession, as was done with the potatoes? But suppose the 90 acres in wheat--that, added to the 55 acres already in wheat, would make 145 acres in wheat on a farm of 260 acres; and this must continue, if there is anything in your theory, and if your annual profits are to be maintained. If these positions you do not mean to maintain, your case falls to pieces. In the mean time it is a mere hypothesis, untried and unproved; and all agricultural experience and science, as far as known, compels us to believe that it would turn out a total failure. But, admitting the hypothesis, still the tenant's profits (seed deducted) would be reduced from £718, 6s., to £328, 6s. You propose another suggestion, however--to allocate the 90 acres partly to an extension of green crop, and partly to an increased breadth of wheat. Will turnips and clover grow, year after year successively, on the moss? This is another hypothesis about as visionary as the preceding. But allow 45 acres of the 90 on turnips and grass for house-feeding, at your nett profit of £6, 11s. 6d. per acre, (p. 12,) this will give £295, 17s. 6d.; and the other 45 acres in wheat, at 38 bushels per acre, and at 5s. per bushel, (_your own quantity and price_,) and, seed deducted, they give £393, 15s., being, _in cumulo_, £689, 12s. 6d.--_i. e._ less than the profit of the potatoes by £510, 7s. 6d., and bringing down the tenant's remuneration from £718, 6s. to £207, 18s. 6d. But this is very far from exhibiting the realities of the position which you have ventured to take up. You assume 5s. per bushel as the price of the wheat. The Wigtonshire fiars, as lately struck, make wheat only 4s. 4d. per bushel. To that price you cannot object. You court a comparison with Messrs Watson and Dudgeon, and in that case you will allow us to raise the rent of Auchness to 32s. per acre, (the rent given in their statistics,) more especially as you contend that it is now worth £2 per acre, (p. 41, 4th edit.) Upon these equitable premises, let us see how the Auchness balance-sheet for crop 1849 will stand.

Bushels.
55 acres wheat, 38 bushels per acre, 2090
Off seed, 168
-------
1922 at 4s. 4d. £416 8 8

45 acres wheat, additional, 1710
Off seed, 135
-------
1575 at 4s. 4d. 341 5 0

45 acres additional green crop, at £6, 11s. 6d. nett profit, 295 17 6
1 acre Italian ryegrass, per balance-sheet, 5 0 0
90 acres green crop, per balance-sheet, 884 6 0
----------
Income, £1942 17 2
Expenditure, as per balance-sheet, 1851 10 0
----------
Income at present rent, 91 7 2
But a rent of 32s. per acre adds to the expenditure, 156 0 0
----------
Tenant's loss, £64 12 10

But even yet we are allowing you advantages which are inadmissible. The supposititious price put upon the cattle, so far beyond the current profit, ought to be largely reduced, and an average of 38 bushels wheat over 100 acres, a portion of these being moss, is certainly much too high. Nevertheless, giving you the benefit of these unusual demands, and the advantages of a superior climate, admirable accommodation, and an annual bonus of 500 loads of sea-weed, it appears, that when your new mode of farming Auchness (the potato being abandoned) is put to the test, that instead of having a remuneration of £718, 6s., Mr M'Culloch loses £64, 12s. 10d. Shuffle the land as you please--crop it as you please--speculate as wildly as you please on the patience and powers of the soil, and grant the most perfect success to attend your speculations, yet it is as certain as arithmetic can make it, that, the moment you depart from the potato culture, the pecuniary marvels at Auchness wholly vanish. It was rash to throw down the gauntlet as you have done. You ought to have "stuck to your text," (the potato,)--as long as the text will stick to you. According to your new mode of arranging the culture at Auchness, there must annually, on a farm of 260 acres, be 100 acres wheat, and 110 acres green crop. How long the land will endure this remains to be proved. I have not a shadow of a doubt that not very many years would elapse before the reduced quantity of wheat per acre, and the reduced value of the turnip crop, would place the factor at Auchness in a worse category than Messrs Watson and Dudgeon; and that he would awake to the conviction that, as he has found there is something in the potato rot, so there may be something, too, in a rotation of crops.

Still, upon your new hypothesis, at the present rent, there would be a margin of profit. Let us examine into this matter somewhat more narrowly. "Deducting Mr M'Culloch's 92 acres of potatoes, 55 acres of wheat, and 22 acres of oats, we have 91 acres left; 50 of which are in turnips, and 41 in clover and grass. The nett produce yielded by the stock fed on these 91 acres, (besides the keep of the farm-horses,) this very year, in the midst of all this depression, will not be less (after deducting purchased food) than £600, which is equal to £6, 11s. 6d. an acre, besides the valuable stock of manure which has, at the same time, been accumulated," (p. 12.) In this statement there are sundry slips of the memory. If the keep of the horses at Auchness consisted solely of turnips and the succulent clover, as you seem to say, they must be peculiarly constituted animals, and endowed with most singular peristaltic powers. On such liquescent diet they might, perhaps, at one and the same time, work their work, and thoroughly manure the fields. There would be some difficulty in so timing the conjoined operations, one would think, as to avoid waste as well as danger. Mr Huxtable's pigs, I fancy, would be pleasant and savoury company compared to the Auchness horses. However, you forget that, by the 17th January last, these horses had consumed 1100 bushels of oats, and that £105 worth more of oats had been bought to supply their wants, and those of the servants. (See Auchness Balance-sheet, pp. 46, 47.) Moreover, the horses must surely have been allowed the larger proportion of the oat-straw, (there is no hay,) if not the whole of it. The feeding-stock had the whole straw and chaff grown upon the farm, with the exception of what fell to the share of the horses: and thus £600 _was not_ the nett produce of these 91 acres of green crop, but along with that of the greater part of the fodder grown upon the farm. Again, you deduct "the purchased food;" but why not deduct the purchased manures, before you speak of "the nett produce yielded by the stock?" Still, with these qualifications, £6, 11s. 6d. per acre, for the green crop and fodder, is a remarkable profit; so remarkable for 1849-50, in my estimation, as to be unparalleled. Let us look at the memorable Balance-sheet for a little: 44 cattle bought in June are sold out at £5, 5s. of an advance per head; 208 wethers are sold at 9s. per head advance;--all this before 17th January last. We are not told what the animals were bought in at. We are not told what they brought per stone. Mystery envelops the whole transaction, and we are left to grope and guess at the mode in which this remarkable result was arrived at. An average of £5, 5s. per head upon 44 cattle, and of 9s. per head upon 208 wethers, is so extraordinary a profit in these times, that I doubt if two other agriculturists in the island could record a similar experience. The fact is, that everywhere the elements of incredibility are apparent on this part of the Auchness Balance-sheet. None would question it more lustily than Mr Mechi. Bullocks which cost him £249 gave him a profit of £37, and sheep which cost him £332 a profit of £95, during the past season! No wonder that he describes bullocks as "ungrateful fellows;" and that in spite of Porcius and his Attic salt he is in love with the Rector's pigs. But indeed Mechi seems to differ with you _toto cælo_. So far from advocating, along with you, a more extensive cultivation of green crops, he is "quite satisfied that they must be made secondary and subservient to the larger consumption of corn or cake."--(See his live-stock account for 1849, of 2d Feb. in _Gardeners' Chronicle_.) How are such "discordant utterances" to be reconciled? Methinks you high-farming gentlemen should agree more nearly with one another, before you dictate so dogmatically to others. Certain it is that the result at Auchness could not arise from the exquisite quality of the animals; for it is demonstrable that oxen and wethers, as fine and fat as any ever fed there, or as ever were led to the shambles, have this season produced to their owners no such profit. Had 8 or 10 of the 44 cattle brought such a profit, the thing would have been intelligible. It is the immense profit per head, over such a lot of cattle and sheep, that has excited the universal scepticism. But if we remember that these 44 cattle may have been fed during a period of seven months, then the profit per head is more intelligible. But if so, of how many months does the agricultural year at Auchness consist? Looking at the two Balance-sheets rendered, they seem to run into one another in an inextricable fashion; and I suspect that, in a cycle of three or four years, one year with its profits will have disappeared and been absorbed. If this does not explain the mystery, we must suppose that the stock was bought in at an unusually favourable rate, and that they were sold out fat, at a larger sum per stone than any other feeder has got. This would indicate that the factor at Auchness is a market-man of unrivalled dexterity--the luckiest wight in driving a bargain that ever handled _nowt_. In fact, his good luck here seems as singular as it was in the matter of the moss and its potatoes. But what has this to do with high farming? Is the success of agriculture to depend upon happy accidents, and the possession of a genius for marketing operations unrivalled and unapproachable?

But something more astonishing remains. Look at this item of income,--"86 cattle _in course of feeding_, at £5, 5s. per head advance." The cattle are not fed--they are in course of feeding. They are not sold--no price has been offered for them. They may be "decimated" by the murrain; prices may fall--they have fallen; the factor's good luck as a seller may leave him; but the sanguine Mr M'Culloch has resolved that the profit per head shall be £5, 5s., and down he puts to the income side of the balance-sheet the neat aditament of £451, 10s. He has 400 tons of potatoes; they may perish in the pits, as in many places they are doing. It matters not. Mr M'Culloch has made up his mind that they are worth £3 per ton, and he transfers to his profits, as received, the sum of £1200. We wonder if the factor's books are kept in the same fashion as the farm books? If so, they must contain some pleasant entries--such as, A. B.'s rent, £1200--not paid--intended to be paid--gave him a discharge in full. Why, the balance-sheet at Auchness is _avowedly supposititious_--a magnificent Californian fiction. Mr M'Culloch seems one of those blessed visionaries who riot in the prospect of profits to be realised, and whose strong imagination gives existence and reality to the possibilities of ideal gain. Upon the authority of its framer, we see now that the Auchness balance-sheet is professedly pictorial and factitious; and it is upon this stable foundation that the farmers of Britain are asked to invest more capital in their business, and to practise the Auchness mode of husbandry. Are you and Mr M'Culloch in earnest? I can scarcely believe it. Cicero tells us that one augur meeting another could scarcely help smiling; and one can scarcely help thinking that you and Mr M'Culloch must have many a quiet laugh at the boundless gullibility of the Free-trade press and the Free-trade proprietors, swallowing your high farming as the substitute for Protection, and the remedy for the sufferings entailed on the kingdom by Free-trade legislation.

You tell us, however, that you have "plenty more" of as profitable instances of high farming, "for the instruction of Messrs Dudgeon and Watson, and the edification of the author of the _Book of the Farm_. From Ireland even, I could instance a small farm within my own knowledge, where, by the practice of house-feeding, an annual return, in dairy produce, of at least £400 is obtained from less than 60 imperial acres;" (p. 11.) When, in your first pamphlet, (see prefatory note, fifth edition,) you wrote that you had selected for exhibition a single example in the case of Auchness, implying that you had many more such cases to pick and choose from, I confess that I felt, at the time, that the statement was disingenuous. I utterly deny that you can produce one other case similar to Auchness, and that can parallel it in its advantages and in its profits, unless, indeed its balance-sheet is framed after the Auchness model. If you have plenty more such cases, why not mention them? Why keep them secret--a _terra incognita_--when the agricultural world is panting for information? You are like the cruel alchemist who discovered the philosopher's stone, but who, in sulky obstinacy, resolved to die without divulging the invaluable secret, and did so accordingly. Your present vaunt, I am inclined to look upon as idle braggadocio. In your gallop through Ireland, a case is reported to you of £400 being obtained from less than 60 acres in dairy produce. Are you quite sure that this was not a bit of blarney dropped into your credulous ear? It is not in the nature of an Irishman to refrain from "humbugging a Saxon bosthoon;" and that you were sometimes crammed and humbugged by the "wild Irish," is undeniable. (See _Dublin Evening Mail_ of 6th February last.) £400 was the annual return: you do not tell us what was the annual expenditure. The profit, whatever it might be, was only for one year. And it is by such isolated, unsupported, and apocryphal illustrations, that you now vindicate your high farming so called! Individual instances of extraordinary profit are within the knowledge of every farmer. In two several cases, I have known £100 sterling being got for one acre of carrots. The 260 acres at Auchness, at this rate, would give a grand annual result of £26,000. There is a balance-sheet for you!--there is a brave speculation. Try it, and never fear the worm.

In the mean time, there is only the one solitary case of Auchness which you have exhibited, and on this narrow basis you build your theory, and denounce all who question its authenticity, and who, if accepted as given, deny its fitness for universal adoption. You have "plenty more," you say, but, with a relentless taciturnity, you decline to tell us where they are to be found. And thus you fancy that you have met and overthrown the agricultural statistics published by _Blackwood_ in January last. You misunderstand or misrepresent the value of these statistics. _Blackwood's_ statistics are applicable to the farming of the districts to which they severally refer, and not for one, but for the average of years of an ordinary lease, and _under existing covenants_. If they had been the literal results and experience of the reporters on their own farms, as you, with reckless inattention, persist in representing them all to be, they would have been of little value, and they never could have been attested as they have been; and, on the other hand, they would have possessed as little value had they not been drawn up from the results of their own experience and practical knowledge. They have all the force of those tabular accounts of sales which mercantile men are in the habit of transmitting to their correspondents--containing not the exact dealings of any one merchant, which would be in a great measure useless, but communicating the actual state of the existing market. The tables in _Blackwood_ were not intended to exhibit generally the highest ascertained capabilities of the best qualities of the soil, not to depict "the possible of agricultural development;" but to show how much agricultural knowledge, capital, and skill had actually accomplished on average soils, in an average of years. In this very fact consisted the value of their results: otherwise, they never could have proved the effects of Free Trade on Scottish agriculture generally. And then, the respective reports in _Blackwood_ are examined by others in the same districts. The examinators--gentlemen of known capacity and undoubted honour--having tested the reports by their own knowledge and experience, certify them as correct. We need not be surprised at the vast importance which has been attached to _Blackwood's_ statistics, and at the countless and futile attempts which have been made, by those hostile to the interests of British agriculture, to contradict and deny their accuracy. How very different is your case! You give a solitary instance of a farm farmed by the factor of the estate, under a covenant so unboundedly liberal that it leaves the tenant to do anything he pleases, if he pays a moderate, in fact, a low rent for the ground. The lease was probably drawn by the factor himself; and, if it were not, the farmer could not wish it more liberal and indulgent. The relative position of the parties throws suspicion and doubt upon the whole case. Every one feels this. When the proprietor expended so large a sum of money in improving the farm of Auchness--receiving no rise of rent, but bare interest for his outlay--did he not mean to make it a suitable residence for his factor, and to constitute it a kind of experimental farm in the district? In the liberal covenant, is the factor's remuneration in part not included? Is the Auchness liberal covenant the exception, and not the rule, amongst the tenant-farmers of Wigtonshire? And then, while many have borne their testimony to the excellence of the crops, and to the management of the stock, not one has certiorated the Auchness balance-sheet, but yourself. In this branch of the case you are a _testis singularis_. You seem to hint that Mr Stephens might certify to your competency as a witness. But that gentleman maintains an ominous silence. The whole rests upon your _ipse dixit_. And when the inquirer drops a gentle surmise, you turn round in a rage, and storm and stamp, proclaiming, at the top of your voice, "I am Sir Oracle, and when I ope my lips let no dog bark."

With regard to _Blackwood's_ statistics, you again and again admit their unchallengeable correctness. Their "facts," you say, "are too well vouched to be disputed; they will be admitted at once by any candid mind," (p. 5.) If it be so, then, in their position, the conclusion from the facts is inevitable. When you ask them to meet the altered times by growing wheat every year on the same ground--or, at least, biennially, over nearly the half of their farm--and by extending their quantity of green crop, and feeding off six times the quantity of stock, their answer is, that they cannot and dare not. The ordinary conditions of a lease, and the principles of any known system of rotation, are set at utter defiance at Auchness. When the moss sickens of the perpetual potato, its rebellion is punished by scarification. It is skinned of its cuticle to the depth of "a few inches," which is transported to the red-land fields, (p. 7, first pamph.) If it does not mend its manners, the invaluable moss will, after a period, disappear bodily, and the rent of the generous Col. M'Douall will be left to repose on the "lower silurian formation."

_Blackwood's_ farmers are tied up by leases which they dare not violate--under penalties which the Auchness profits would not cover--and they have no accommodation for feeding the enormous quantity of stock which you prescribe for them. But if they could farm their land as they please, I question much if they would think it expedient to adopt the incessant cropping and the excessive stirring and stimulating of the soil by enormous and rapidly renewed doses of manure, as exemplified at Auchness. This system does admirably _for a few years_ on untried soil, having all its rude virgin vigour in it, like the Auchness farm, when it came into the hands of Mr M'Culloch. But, after a certain time, the infallible result, as far as the cereals are concerned, is a mass of rank vegetation and miserable grain, in respect both of quantity and weight. When the ultimate profits of the nineteen years' lease are regarded, and the desire to grow for a series of years true, and, at the same time, prolific corn crops is entertained, a prudent and skilful agriculturist may well pause before he plunges into the Auchness experiment. Mr M'Culloch may find, ere long, that his vexed and wearied land will demand more rest and repose than Mr Caird, by his further illustrations of high farming, would give it.

Nor is this all. Messrs Watson and Dudgeon, unlike Mr M'Culloch, are breeders of stock as well as feeders. Mr Watson, particularly, is one of the most eminent breeders in the kingdom. Although you may never have heard of them, his polled Angusshire cattle are somewhat celebrated. They have excited universal admiration over all the island, on the pastures at Windsor Castle, in Smithfield, and in the show-yards of the Highland and Agricultural Society. Most probably Mr Watson, like most men who have devoted much money and time to the improvement of our various breeds of stock, may not have profited largely by his enterprise: but who, yourself excepted, can doubt that he has, in this department, conferred more important benefits on the agriculture of the kingdom than a hundred such experiments as the Auchness potato culture can possibly effect? But if there is a breeding stock upon a farm, then the stock-feeding system, to the extent that is carried on at Auchness, is impossible. The young stock which are to be bred from, if they are to have healthy and sound constitutions, must be allowed the range of the open field for many months in the year. You boast of the stock fed at Auchness; I venture to say that more admirable specimens of cattle and sheep can be produced at Keillor or Spylaw--animals of more exquisite symmetry, size, and quality--than Mr M'Culloch ever has exhibited, or ever will exhibit, if he adheres to his present system. Cattle must be bred by some other party, or the Auchness feeding-system must stop for want of animals. Mr M'Culloch subsists upon the breeders of the country. He requires several farms, of the same extent as his own, to supply him with animals. It is highly unwise of you to urge upon this class the adoption of a different system, for, without their aid, there would be empty stalls at Auchness.

But in the production of grain you try to demonstrate that Messrs Watson, Dudgeon, and Gibson have sadly degenerated from their predecessors. In proof of this, you adduce the evidence of Messrs Brodie, East-Lothian, and Turnbull, South Belton, Dunbar, as given before a committee of the House of Commons, and quoted in the _Farmer's Magazine_ for 1814. You have given, however, a partial and one-sided sample of the evidence taken by this Parliamentary Committee. There are five gentlemen who gave evidence regarding the average produce of wheat per acre, two of whom only depone to the quantities of oats and barley grown per acre. It is in the article of wheat alone that the evidence can enable us satisfactorily to ascertain whether, since 1814, there has been an agricultural progress or an agricultural declension. Five of the agricultural tables in _Blackwood_ state the average produce of wheat. Wheat is the great staple article of the nation's farinaceous food--that grain upon which the Free-traders repose all their calculations, and to the selection of which you cannot object, as it is the only grain you grow at Auchness for the people. Well, let us put the five agriculturists quoted by _Blackwood_ in juxtaposition with the five agriculturists whose evidence appears in the Parliamentary Report of 26th July 1814.

1814.
Bushels Wheat
per Acre.
Mr E. Wakefield, Devonshire,
improved husbandry, 24

Mr J. Bennet, Wiltshire, do., 24

Mr J. Bailey, Northumberland,
rent £2 per acre, 30

Mr Brodie, East-Lothian, 32

Mr Turnbull, do., 30
----
Produce of five acres, 140

On an average of years previous to 1848.

Mr Watson, _Forfarshire_, 32
Mr Dudgeon, _Roxburghshire_, 33
Mr Roberton, do., 33
Mr Sadler, Mid-Lothian, 32
Mr Gibson, do., 32
----
162
140
----
22

That is, the farmers quoted by _Blackwood_ have on an average of good and bad years, on average land, been growing nearly 4½ bushels wheat more per acre, than the farmers, on the most fertile soils in the country, quoted in the Parliamentary Report of 1814. It is quite true that Messrs Brodie and Turnbull grow more oats and barley per acre than Messrs Watson and Dudgeon, on their average of years; and, you might have added, more than Mr M'Culloch did with his boasted high farming in the abundant crop of 1849. You say that the figures of Messrs Brodie and Turnbull give "their average produce for a series of years, and elaborate extracts from their books are adduced to corroborate them," (p. 14.) Now, in giving his evidence, Mr Brodie pointedly states that he had taken his farm "two years ago;" and therefore it could not be "for a series of years" that he gave the average produce of his farms. Mr Brodie _produced no extracts from his books_, and altogether you misstate his case. Mr Turnbull's evidence is more copious. To the question--"What is your course of cropping?" his answer is--"My heavy land in a rotation of six--remainder, of about 80 acres, is in a rotation of four; 334 acres are under the plough; the remainder (20 acres) always in grass." And he describes his six-shift course, which applies to 250 acres of the whole arable land, to be--"Fallow, wheat, grass, oats, beans, and wheat." Mr Turnbull did grow more corn crops than Messrs Watson and Dudgeon; but you forget to tell your reader that, during your "cycle of thirty years," he had three-fourths of his farm, for five several years, in fallow, absolutely barren, and not producing a mouthful of bread or anything else, for the people. If the loss incurred during these five years of bare fallow is considered, and if regard is had not only to cereal produce, but to the cattle grown and fed on their pasturage, it may be safely concluded that Messrs Watson and Dudgeon are at least as large benefactors, in supplying food to the people from inferior soils, as Messrs Brodie and Turnbull were, on the very best lands in Scotland. You seem to fancy, because Mr Brodie valued his clover at £6, 6s. per acre, and his turnips at from £8 to £10 per acre, that, in the department of stock, he greatly excelled Messrs Watson and Dudgeon. You forget, again, to tell your reader that it was the _Scotch acre_ that Mr Brodie spoke of: was this accident or ignorance? If this error is corrected, and if the exorbitant prices of butcher-meat at the period referred to are remembered, the value of the green crop, as assumed by Mr Brodie, will surprise no one.

Your whole case is based upon a garbled and partial collation of the evidence taken by Parliament; and independently of this, you totally misconceive and misinterpret the case, as quoted by you. The two farms referred to by you are about the very best in North Britain. Nor is this all: they were among the earliest and oldest cultivated soils in Scotland, according to the improved methods of husbandry then in practice. Previous to 1814, they were let at three times the rent of Keillor or Spylaw. There is a point beyond which you cannot raise the productiveness of the soil--when it revolts, and visits your avarice with sharp reprisals. This you admit in your first pamphlet, (p. 17.) The real question is this, had not Messrs Brodie and Turnbull raised the productive powers of their farms nearly or altogether to the maximum of the soil's fertility?--or, as you say, could they have insured a larger bulk of crop without the danger of lodging it? In the articles of barley and oats, most unquestionably they could not. Mr Brodie grew 48 bushels barley, and 57 bushels oats, per imperial acre; and Mr Turnbull 45 bushels barley, and 54 bushels oats, per imperial acre. On the very best soils, and by any kind of culture, and with as large an application of manure as you please, I defy you to grow, on an average of years, larger quantities than these.

Look now at the farms with which you compare Messrs Brodie's and Turnbull's. Take Spylaw. Previous to 1814, that farm was well-nigh in a state of primitive sterility: although ploughed, it was a quagmire; and the agriculture was what you poetically call according to "nature, which has no rotation of crops." Mr Dudgeon entered on the farm in 1824; and since that time he has doubled the produce of the grain, and quadrupled the quantity of the stock. Call you this nothing, young man!--nothing in the way of providing food for the million? Since 1814 or 1824, has the produce of grain been doubled, and the quantity of stock quadrupled, on the farms of Messrs Brodie and Turnbull? Nay, has there been any perceptible advance in the quantity of grain grown? Has the produce of the grain not remained stationary--and not from any want of skill or enterprise upon the part of the farmer, but simply because the soil, previous to 1814, had about reached the limit of its productiveness? By an enormous outlay, and by admirable skill and management, Mr Dudgeon has thus raised the productive powers of a soil naturally of a very inferior description--and not in abundant seasons, but on an average of years--up very nearly to the highest mark of the best land in the kingdom previous to 1814. The very same, I have no doubt, is the history of the agricultural progress that has taken place upon Mr Watson's farm; and, on the question of agricultural progress generally, the evidence, fortunately, is accessible to all inquirers. The volume of the _Farmer's Magazine_ for 1814, which you refer to, might have instructed you on this subject. An apparently well-qualified writer in that volume, states "22½ bushels wheat per acre as a high enough average for clay land in the best cultivated counties of Scotland," (p. 151.)

Your contrasting two of the choicest farms in all Scotland with the average soil of Forfarshire and Roxburghshire, indicates a want of fairness, and destroys the value of your criterion. Intending to depreciate, you unwittingly have pronounced a panegyric on the farming of Messrs Watson and Dudgeon. You have the hardihood to say, "that the annual produce reaped by Messrs Watson and Dudgeon has actually fallen off nearly a third from what it was in the days of their grandfathers!" This is a ridiculous blunder, and we have seen that your whole speculation on this subject is constructed on a series of wild errors, and illustrated by a Gothic ignorance of the past history of Scotch husbandry. Your poor taunt recoils upon yourself.

In summing up results, you tell us "that Mr Watson, at present prices, derives a gross return of £920 from 340 acres under wheat, grass, and turnips. Mr Dudgeon has £1087, 10s. from 360 acres under the same crops. And Mr M'Culloch has £1369, 16s. from 146 acres," (p. 17.) Now, supposing the hypothetical balance-sheet is to be received into court, there yet lurks under this summary a gross misstatement. Mr M'Culloch had no such return from his wheat, grass, and turnips on the 146 acres: £284 was expended for purchased food for the stock, and this contributed largely to the result, but reduces the return from the 146 acres to £1065, 16s. As well might the distiller who rents 40 acres, but who annually fattens hundreds of cattle upon the feeding stuffs furnished by his distillery, put down the immense sum of profit received from his cattle, as the return from the portion of the 40 acres under wheat, grass, and turnips. The error may be unintentional, but a more loose or fallacious statement of the fact is scarcely conceivable. You are guilty of a similar dereliction in p. 43, where you say that Mr Christopher, "from 270 acres under grass and green crops, derived under Protection a return in money of £710, much less than Mr M'Culloch's return under Free Trade from 91 acres of grass and green crop." In fact, Mr M'Culloch's return from the 91 acres _may_ be, (for it is not realised,) £600.

In this veracious fashion you illustrate the "results of high farming under Free Trade, and ordinary farming under Protection." A most extraordinary simpleton will he be who receives without hesitation the Auchness balance-sheet, and your rose-coloured illustrations of high farming. "What would have been the position," you ask, "of the country, if the food of the people had depended exclusively on such exertions as those of Messrs Dudgeon, Watson, and Low? By their rules, the half of the population ought to have been starved long ago; and if the produce of the country has in any degree kept pace with the increase of its population, we are not indebted for it to them," (p. 16.) To whom, then, are you indebted? Not to the Auchness husbandry, which is a prodigy of yesterday's growth--not to Mr M'Culloch and his attendant satellite; for it is only six months since these luminaries appeared in the western hemisphere. You are indebted, and could be indebted, for the result, to no other parties but _Blackwood's_ farmers and their contemporaries. The people ought to have been starved, you say; yes, but they have not been starved, and that fact demonstrates the falsehood of your premises, and renders their refutation unnecessary.

But, not content with thus stultifying your own allegation, you deliver yourself a few pages after, in a happy forgetfulness of what you had just written, in the following terms,--"Here, then, were some remarkable phenomena. A population doubled, the demand for food vastly increased, the foreigner practically excluded, and yet a steady fall in the price of our produce. How is this explained?" (p. 23.) Most inexplicable phenomena, indeed! Scottish farmers of the present generation growing a third less food than their grandfathers, (p. 15;) and yet, with a doubled population, there is an abundance of home-grown food, and a "steady fall in the price of our agricultural produce," (p. 23.) You proceed then manfully to refute yourself, to demolish your own theory, and to rebut and expose what you had written a few pages before; and all this you accomplish with a very creditable success. This proceeding on your part was in the highest degree kind, clever, and considerate. There can be no doubt, as you show, (p. 24,) that it has been in consequence of the progressive improvement in domestic agriculture, that the supply of food has kept pace with the increasing population; and there can be no doubt that this would have continued to be the case, without making us dependent on foreigners for our daily bread, had not Free-trade legislation laid a fatal arrestment on the progress of British agriculture.

You talk wisely on the advantages attending the introduction of bones and guano, and contemptuously of Messrs Watson and Dudgeon, as adhering slavishly to some obsolete system of farming, "stereotyped for them years ago in the books of Professor Low or Mr Stephens." You write this in great ignorance, or in unhappy perversity of temper. Nearly thirty years ago, Mr Watson erected costly machinery for crushing bones, and was at great trouble and expense in testing their value as a manure, and recommending them to his brother farmers; and, in appreciation of his services, they presented him with a valuable piece of plate. (See _Journal of Agriculture_.) Mr Dudgeon was the very first to report practically to the Highland and Agricultural Society, in 1842, upon the value of guano as applied to the turnip crop, and in the following year had nearly 100 acres of this crop manured with guano, when otherwise the whole breadth of turnips, in the county of Roxburgh, raised with this manure did not reach to this extent. In fact, the very parties whom you affect to sneer at, and their compeers, are the very parties who have raised the character of Scottish farming, and rendered it famous over the world. It is no common trial of the patience to hear them reviled by an inexperienced adventurer, whom the ferment of the times has thrown upon the surface of society.

You disparage the amount expended by _Blackwood's_ farmers on labour, but you forget that they give it as an average expenditure over a series of years, and not for a year or two during the course of expensive improvements; and you expatiate on the tendency of the high farming at Auchness to give employment to an increasing population; and yet you tell us that, at Auchness, "machinery has been applied to every purpose in which labour can be economised about the steading," (p. 11.) The tendency to economise manual labour, and the tendency to increase employment for the agricultural labourers, seem somewhat contradictory and self-destructive features in the Auchness system.

From the account which you have given in your first pamphlet, of the agricultural condition of Auchness when it first fell into the hands of Mr M'Culloch, it appears to have been in a state of the most primitive and unparalleled barbarity. Receiving unwonted encouragement from the proprietor, he commenced a process of vigorous improvement, which he is accomplishing regardless of expense. By and by he will have achieved his object, and the outlay will be greatly diminished. We are not left to conjecture on this subject, for, in a note appended to his balance-sheet, Mr M'Culloch tells us, that, "next year the large sum for purchased manures will be reduced at least one-half;" and that he "will be able, in a year or two, to dispense altogether with the expenditure for purchased manures." The plain truth seems to be, that Mr M'Culloch is in course of doing what _Blackwood's_ farmers, Mr Dudgeon, and thousands of other farmers, have already done. What is the meaning, then, of all this ridiculous rant about the high farming at Auchness? If, at the end of twenty years, Mr M'Culloch can grow the crops which _Blackwood's_ farmers are now growing, and gets his facts attested as they have got theirs, it will prove very creditable management.

You ask what _Blackwood's_ farmers have done to multiply bread-stuffs for a growing population? That is a most singular question for the eulogist of the Auchness potato-husbandry to have hazarded. Towards the production of cereals there are only 55 acres set apart at Auchness--a smaller proportion than, perhaps, on any farm of similar extent and soil in the kingdom. The potato is the sheet-anchor of your wealth, and the staple food you grow for the people; and to this fickle root you devote more than a third of the whole farm. And yet is not the potato, as the main source of a people's food, which your system makes it, the very root of physical degradation, and the very type of moral wretchedness? Was not the excessive cultivation of the potato the main cause of Ireland's misery, and of the famine that desolated her shores? And was not the lesson derived by every thoughtful man, from the dread visitation, a conviction of the folly and peril of making this precarious root the mainstay of a people's food? and was not the hope cherished that the Great Ruler, whose prerogative it is to bring good out of evil, might over-rule the pestilence and the famine to advance the improvement of Irish husbandry, and the comfort of the Irish people? But, in infatuated defiance of the warnings of Providence, and the stern lessons proclaimed by famine, you hold up, as a model for British farmers, a system of agriculture in which the most prominent feature is an excessive cultivation of the potato. Had British farmers, the growers of the nation's food, persisted after 1846, and in face of Parliamentary instructions, in growing the potato--not to the extent grown at Auchness, but to the extent to which they themselves grew it formerly--they would have deserved to have been cognosced and sent to Bedlam. Your agricultural economy is undeniably, in this respect, retrogressive; and its tendency, if generally adopted, is to plunge our country into the abyss of Irish misery. And yet you write magniloquently about the production of bread-stuffs and food for the people! You wonder that Mr Gibson of Woolmet, "commanding a metropolitan market, so little appreciates the advantages and necessities of his position that, instead of raising vegetable produce for that market," he persists in growing grain. Your wonder is the daughter of ignorance. You seem not to be aware of what is notorious, that there is already more ground cultivated by market-gardeners than is required to supply the citizens of Edinburgh. No class of the community feel the effects of Free Trade more than they do, as their early crops, on which they principally relied, are entirely forestalled by supplies from Hamburg, Rotterdam, and other foreign ports. Forgetting your advocacy of "bread-stuffs," you are high in your praises of "edible roots;" and vegetable productions must now, it appears, be the source of agricultural prosperity. Where could a market be found for table roots, if generally cultivated by the farmers of the kingdom? Man does not belong to the herbivorous tribes. Cabbages and colewort won't sustain him. Bread, to him, is the staff of life. Roots are a windy, watery diet; they breed melancholy and send vapoury fumes to the brain. We must have "cakes and ale" in spite of you.

You have favoured the world, in your present pamphlet, with some singularly original views on the subject of rent, which throw a flood of light on your theory of high farming and the liberal covenant, and which I think dissipate all the mystery and difficulty in which otherwise you had left these subjects surrounded. _Blackwood's_ farmers, you say, "give us estimates of what they lose by Free Trade; and it is a remarkable circumstance that, in every case, the estimated loss might be converted into a profit, simply by changing the figure which they put down for rent!" (p. 28, 29.) Most notable discovery! Instead of being 32s. per acre, had Messrs Watson and Dudgeon's rent been 12s. or 2s. per acre, all would be right, says the new agricultural oracle. Who ever doubted this? And so, after much idle chaffering, and most wearisome circumlocution, the truth at last leaps to the light--the loss which the farmer incurs by Free Trade is to be converted into a profit simply by _changing the figure of the rent_. The idea is admirable, and it is enunciated with exquisite coolness; and it possesses the sublime simplicity that distinguishes all the happy discoveries of genius. Lower the rent--bring it down to zero, if need be--and thus convert the tenant's loss by Free Trade into a profit. Most preposterous is it for the nation to be pestered with these Protection meetings, and to be disturbed by the agricultural depression, with so ready a remedy lying at the door. Agricultural distress flies the kingdom, simply by changing the figure of the rent. When once divulged, we wonder that we did not ourselves discover the grand truth. I am not exaggerating your prescription for agricultural difficulty--nor has it dropped from your pen _per incuriam_--you reiterate the same view in your remarks upon Mr Munro's pamphlet, to indicate the importance you attach to it. Mr Munro, you write, "of course had to use his own discretion only as to the rotation of cropping, and might exterminate every head of game on his estate. He could have reduced the rent to please himself. Yet, possessing all these advantages, Mr Munro was unable to farm at a profit," (p. 31.) Mr Munro had fixed a rent on his land, such as he could have easily got from a competent tenant; but the intervention of Free Trade annihilated his profit. You are astonished at his simplicity. He could reduce his rent to please himself; and, by changing the figure, transmute his loss into a profit. Being both proprietor and tenant, he could play with impunity the game of "change the figures." He never could lose, for what the laird lost the tenant gained. _Blackwood's_ farmers, in their unsophisticated simplicity, never seem to have dreamed of changing the figure. They may have been prevented by qualms of conscience. They may have questioned the morality of the proceeding, or doubted the propriety even of its political economy. 'Tis a pity you did not sooner publish this part of the Auchness specific. It would have saved much profitless discussion. It is by far the most vital element in your liberal covenant, and completes its perfect development. It happily explains and illustrates the Auchness balance-sheet. By this time the proprietors of the kingdom will understand the pleasant position in which you are to put them. With the right of hypothec abrogated, a rotation of crops exploded, and their rent lowered until it meets the depreciated prices, and converts the tenant's loss into profit, they will fall into a very enviable predicament. I sympathise with the Free-trade lairds. Sad and dismal are their meditations, and deep and bitter their murmurs. They say they are betrayed, and that they have reared up and cherished an enemy in their camp.

There is another question, however, which your philosophy does not seem to embrace. You never seem to have inquired whether the immense reduction of rents which must take place to meet the present prices, (which are yet daily falling,) so as to convert the farmer's loss into a profit, is to be a national benefit. It is certain that the reduction of rent requisite to effect your avowed object, must infallibly effect a revolution in the structure of society, and entail upon our country a train of sufferings unheard of and unparalleled. It is most creditable to the discernment and patriotism of your brother farmers, that they reject, as a permanent cure for their difficulties, the lowering of rent, so as to turn their present loss into profit. They know that, over a large proportion of the arable soil of the kingdom, rent cannot so fall without being insufficient to meet the present burdens on land, and the great outlay required to maintain the farm-buildings, and to liquidate the other innumerable demands made on the proprietor of the soil. You call loudly for liberal covenants, for expensive buildings, and for more drainage, and at the very time you are depriving the proprietor of the means, and crippling him in his finances. Falling rents, farmers may well know, are the certain index of a retrograde agriculture; and, whatever you may fancy, you cannot reduce rent to the extent you have now pointed out, without inflicting misery, not only on the tenant-farmers and agricultural labourers, but sooner or later on every class in the community. The certain tendency of your agricultural speculation, and by no long circumduction, is to sink the agriculture of Britain to the condition of Irish husbandry, and to overrun the nation with pauperism. The landed interest will not suffer with impunity; and between it and the moneyed interest an internecine war will ensue. There is a set of pestilent demagogues and pretended patriots, flourishing at this moment in the kingdom, who are busy instilling into the masses the revolutionary idea that the landlord's rent is a robbery of the community, and that it may be dealt with as conveniency requires. In your latest essay you have pandered to this pernicious delusion. I do not blame you for so doing. I believe that you write in a childlike innocence, and with total blindness to the necessary consequences of your own doctrines.