nected are the true interests of landlord and tenant, that if the eyes and hearts of the former class be not speedily opened, both proprietors and cultivators will sink into social destruction. Let every landlord who desires to save himself from the coming convulsion, examine the actual condition of each of his tenants, as a father would inspect the individual state of each of his children. Let the tenant make known the special circumstances of his ресиliar case, and demonstrate to his landlord that relief, reached seasonably and liberally, in the shape of permanently-reduced rent, would eventuate in the mutual prosperity of both landlord and tenant. One evident result of public agitation will be to widen the breach between proprietors and rent-payers; whereas private remonstrance would, perhaps, lead to amicable adjustment-for all landlords are not bent upon destroying themselves and others. Therefore we say, although protection be for ever gone, yet the land remains. If that land be wisely and liberally allocated, industry will have such free scope as to secure the best species of protection, and the land would infallibly bring forth its increase. The present churlishness of men obstructs the blessing of God, which is the true cause of all fruitfulness. If there were any approach towards patriarchal proprietorship, patriarchal abundance would quickly exhibit itself, and diffusive plenty would be derived from the generous cultivation of the soil. We can fancy D'Israeli's sneer, and Cobden's scoff, on finding piety and plenty thus closely associated; but we rest on the foundations of eternal truth, which ungodly gainsayers can never subvert-The profit of the earth is for all: the king himself is served by the field. Where this scriptural verity is set at nought, penal consequences must infallibly follow. Woe unto them that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth!

HIGH FARMING, HIGH RENTS, AND LOW PRICES.

In our usual column of correspondence will be found the promised letter of Mentor, on the prevalent agricultural theme. He gives, what we think was much wanted, a clear historical induction of the progress of improved farming in Scotland, long anterior to the grand discoveries at Auchness, so vauntingly trumpted forth

by Cagliostro Caird, who is, in our opinion, a charlatan of the first water. Given a liberal landlord; good land, farmed with all the aids of capital, and all the appliances of skill and industry; together with a fortunate hit of prosperous potato culture, when universal blight was abroad; and you can safely solve the problem of success at Auchness—although, a debtor and creditor account, with satisfactory vouchers, would be a very agreeable Q.E.D. However, admitting that the cultivator of Auchness is as lucky as Mr Caird puffs him off to be; is it not the very acme of fraudulent presumption, to tell the general body of tenant-farmers, that they have it in their power to make high farming the means of paying high rents, apart from the special considerations which render Auchness so eligible a field for gainful operations of husbandry? This we boldly affirm to be the dishonest quackery of Mr Caird: he singles out a case, exceptional in almost all its circumstances, and then lays it down as an irrefragable theorem, applicable to all the farming in the United Kingdom. A man of probity and understanding, in labouring to propagate a sound system, would scorn to resort to such a deception as this; and Mr Caird, having once dabbled in the mire of mendacity, sinks every day deeper in imposture. His agricultural tour in Ireland is full of deceptive details, and we aptly characterised him as a mere bagman for Sir Robert Peel, the high rent protectionist, and high farming free-trader. Our correspondent Mentor brings the succour of his experience and intelligence to popularise our invariable proposition, that the chief relief which tenant-farmers can properly look for is a reasonable reduction of rents. Innumerable quirks and subtleties will be propounded, many of them with a plausible show of practicability, but all bottomed on the solid desire of landlords to evade a diminution of income derived from the hiring out of the soil to cultivators; for that is the plain, intelligible definition of rent. And what countenances the seeming churlishness of proprietors, is the gambling competition for farms: every bidder having a readiness to be ruined, by offering a rate of rent utterly unjustified by any agricultural profits which prudent persons could fairly calculate upon. The law, too, runs so stringently in favour of the landlord, that his cupidity is emboldened by the guarantee of hypothec; and thus, on every side, the seduction to support high rents is too strong to be resisted. Not only are high rents imposed and punctually paid, but we hear to our astonishment, of

rents paid always in advance. The origin of this usage (which we are inclined to think the law would fail in enforcing) is the offer of a year's rent on being preferably inducted in a farm; and thus, what begins in suspicion, ends in oppression; for a landlord who secures his rent beforehand, is not only forestalling the realization of crops or stock, but he is pocketting the interest of money which really belongs to the tenant.

The recent discussion in the House of Lords on the subject of agricultural distress, although incidentally raised by the presentation of petitions, sufficed to draw forth the determination of the Government not to relax the rigour of their anti-protectionist principles. We have all along been perfectly plain with our farming friends on this great point; and we have sought to shew them that all expectations of a return to the abandoned public policy which upheld landlord privilege, are vain and misleading. One of the most cheering considerations to which the attention of farmers can possibly be called is, we think, connected with the true doctrine of demand and supply; for one infallible result of lowness of price is increased consumption of food. Among the richer classes this is seldom noticed, because the wealthy will not retrench or increase the quantity of bread furnished to their families, let prices rise or fall as they may. But with the poorer classes, who form the great body of consumers, the case is wholly different, for a high-priced loaf will impose the necessity of a more frugal consumption of bread; and quickly on the fall of grain, the cheaper loaf ensures more custom to the baker. Do our readers condescend to take this homely view of a subject which philosophers have done their best to involve in the densest darkness? What we mean comfortingly to impress is this, that in a country like England, the depression of corn prices is equivalent to the poor man's increased command over the chief article of subsistence ; and his wages continuing the same, he will to a certainty buy more bread for his family. Now this increased consumption must tell upon the stock of grain; the markets require larger supplies; and these must be drawn from the farmer's stack-yard, who will not suffer himself to be rapidly stripped of his corn without exacting a suitable enhancement of price; and thus by the simple sequence of cause and effect, we get round again to remunerative rates of produce for our sorely tried and almost despairing agriculturists. We would not have it imagined that we look for the return of such

prices as signalised the palmy days of protection; but we do contend that the natural course of things will work in favour of the distressed farmer; and that the very depths of depression, have an encouraging element not sufficiently apprehended and appreciated, viz., that the effect of low prices is inevitably to increase the consumption of the lower classes, whose bare or plentiful standard of subsistence must be measured by the high or low prices of food. We spent more than twenty years of a somewhat observant life, in the centre of the great manufacturing districts of England, and we gleaned, in many quarters, the practical information we now impart to our agricultural readers. We have known a redundant harvest followed by low prices; and we noticed that as soon as the market rates of flour began to lower the price of bread (an event which bakers are sure to defer as long as possible), the families of the operatives (for there are no plain workmen now-a-days) were sure to hail this pleasing reduction with an immediate increase to their domestic diet in the shape of bread. Could we take a knowing peep into many a manufacturer's menage, we should find the same process going forward at present; and the longer it continues, the gayer will be the certainty that the farmer's season of compensation must assuredly arrive.

WHERE ARE FARMERS TO LOOK FOR RELIEF?

We beg to premise that we have no intention of exacting an answer to the above query from our readers; although we shall be most happy to find room for any instructive communications. The simple truth is, that a practical agriculturist of skill, intelligence, and industry, has not only addressed this important interrogatory to our sapient selves, but he has supplied us with some sound and judicious considerations which go far towards furnishing a suitable solution of the great difficulty. If we felt assured that the present pressure on what is fitly termed the agricultural interest was resolvable into a mere question of farming details, we should at once shrink from a discussion, in which our deficient knowledge would soon become laughably evident. But we deem But we deem very differently of the vast subject which now occupies public attention. By an Act of Legislation, professedly for the general weal, it is undeniably certain that a sudden reverse has fallen upon the actual cultivators

of the soil, be they proprietors or tenants of land. We put the proposition in this restricted shape, because, as the pinch of the grievance is connected with an alleged ruinous depression in the prices of produce, it is upon the growers of corn that the primary blow is inflicted. Large owners of land, who do not farm a single acre, will (as we shall show in the sequel) inevitably drop in for their share of suffering; but at present the sore stress of free trade results comes heavily down upon almost every class of tenantfarmers. Our honest conviction is, that the distress prevailing among this great body is severer than they would willingly make known; and that the bulk of them are now struggling with their adverse position by expending the small savings of former years. As market after market only serves to denote still declining prices; the perplexed farmer has not only existing embarrassments to encounter, but he is appalled with the gloominess of future prospects. Here he is fixed for more or less time, and stringently bound by a legal contract to pay a rent agreed upon under what may be styled a totally different agricultural dispensation! A trader or manufacturer may transfer his capital to some more prosperous branch; but the farmer is hemmed in within a circle of exertion, every part of which is disastrously touched by the impoverishing influence of a new system. It is all very well for Mr Cobden, and other partisans of free trade, to dwell complacently on the improved condition of manufacturing labourers; but the true statesman is called to consider the well-being of all-not the exclusive interests of any favoured section of society. And herein consists the gross and vulgar contrariety which pervades the sordid Manchester school. Disclaim it as they may, their warfare against the corn-laws was virtually to establish the preponderating importance of manufacturing interests, which can always be made subservient to political change-drifting towards republicanism; whereas landed property ever inclines towards state stability—and when rightly administered is one of the surest supports of monarchical institutions. Every well managed estate is a miniature monarchy; not so the cotton capitalist's factory, where there is no middle between despotism and anarchy. But manufacturing multitudes enjoy facilities for combination which husbandmen are strangers to; and to this important difference we must ascribe the fact that menacing meetings and leagues of manufacturers, contrived to overawe Parliament into that hasty legislation of which