we feel the bitter fruits. Let us not be misapprehended. We admit that the system of protection was unsound and unsustainable; but we contend that the subversion of that system should not have been the work of one destructive day; but that, on the contrary, ample time ought to have been allowed to the agriculturists to accommodate their arrangements with the portentous alterations which the repeal of the corn laws was sure to involve. No such interval was equitably conceded; and unlimited import instantly superseded protection; drawing with it a depression of corn prices, which, if the new system shall work as its advocates intend, must be a permanent depression. Well, therefore, may the exclamatory question be justified-Where are the farmers to look for relief?—but before we make an attempt to answer it, we must clear the way, by briefly dispersing into air some of the most plausible remedies which are sought to be palmed upon complaining agriculturists.

1. Appeals to Parliament are urgently counselled by many amicable advisers; but what, in the name of common sense, can Parliament do for farmers as a class, which would have the effect of raising prices? The burdens on land are heavy; but so are all burdens in our over-taxed country-arising from the enormous extent of our expensive establishments, the cost of which must be spread as equally as possible over the whole contributing classes of the population. Paltry exemptions from taxation would not materially relieve a farmer, who has to cope with a constantly falling market, and to provide for a permanently heavy rent. But the object of petitioning Parliament is more clearly avowed by some suffering supplicants. They would importune the Legislature to undo what has been solemnly sanctioned, with the view of promoting freedom of trade; in short, the phantom of protection is present to the farmer's comfortless cogitations. Upon this point we have already expressed ourselves, with unflinching certainty and boldness. It is a fraudulent delusion, propagated by some unscrupulous public men, that there can be any reasonable prospect of a return to protection. The principle of that erroneous system is abandoned, and another system practically occupies its place; so that freedom is substituted for protection. The theory of free-trade is in power; for it has become a recognised part of the institutions of the State. Protection is deposed; and the analogy may be carried farther-for death almost always followed

the deposition of princes. But it much behoves farmers to bear in mind, that the return to protection, now loudly called for in some quarters, is absolutely a mere landlord's question. It is to re-invest proprietors with a despotism over land, that protectionists are blowing the bubble of renewed monopoly prices; for did not exorbitant rents take the sap out of protection, so far as tenant farmers and their labourers were concerned? We all know where the lion's share of protection was clutched and squandered, and where it would be seized and spent again. Not in the farmer's homestead, but in the lordly hall!

2. High farming is another of the cheating curatives which some Scotch and English schemers would fain apply to the present diseased state of the agricultural interest. We entered at some length, on a former occasion, into Mr Caird's published records of imposture, and we cannot retract a syllable of our strictures. How can a system of high farming, the very essence of which consists in expensive outlay on the part of both landlord and tenant (for such is the reported case of Auchness) be conceivably applicable in innumerable instances where the landlord cannot afford to be liberal, and the tenant is stripped of even his ordinary resources? lligh farming is, in plain English, the prosecution of costly experiments on suitable soils, regardless of those small savings and small gains which, to our thinking, constitute one marked excellency in Scottish farming. The plain fact is, that Mr Caird is a protectionist towards landlords, and a free-trader towards tenants; and his manufactured bits of books are full of fallacies, which thousands of truth-telling farmers can painfully refute. Whether in the capacity of a Peel's traveller or a Times commissioner, Mr Caird is a man on whose authority no statements can be safely received.

Having thus scattered to the winds all expectations of relief from the interposition of Parliament, and from the nostrum of high farming; we entreat our farming friends to accompany us to the purer precincts of truth, and justice, and warrantable hope. Let us examine whether the very nature of the wrong does not furnish us with some clue to the appropriate remedy. The repeal of the corn laws must be reckoned as the act of the proprietors of the soil; for, take them out of the Legislature, and what a miserable minority would be left behind. All those so consenting, legislating proprietors, were parties to contracts with covenanting cultivators

who engaged to pay rents which were based upon protection prices of produce. By the withdrawal of protection, these prices necessarily fell, and all the partisans of free-trade hold, with Sir Robert Peel, that "a permanently low range of prices" must be looked forward to by all persons connected with agricultural pursuits. Is this really so, O ye proprietors in both houses of Parliament? for if such be the case, ye have disabled tenant farmers from paying the rents which they stipulated to meet out of the just profits of cultivable land! The legislators will, perhaps, rejoin-True, we have annihilated high prices, but we have done so on the most enlightened grounds, and in order to benefit the whole community. Granted; but you have impoverished the cultivators of your own land, and surely you must have conscientiously contemplated what the consequences would be to them. We very much fear that these considerations have been slenderly dwelt on by landlords in or out of Parliament; but we think the time is fully come for the redress of the farmers' wrongs. We dauntlessly declare that, if there be a vestige of righteous principle; of honourable sentiment; of kindly feeling, in the proprietors of the soil, they are bound to institute such inquiries as will lead to a reasonable, permanent, universal reduction of rents. It would reflect lustre upon the aristocracy to take the initiative in this munificent matter. They are the splendid body-guard of royalty, and they should be the protectors (not protectionists) of the State. Let them evince the high-hearted liberality which should be the inheritance of lofty lineages, and at once relieve their distressed dependants, and bring glory to themselves, by spontaneously qualifying those contracts which can no longer be enforced without ruin to leaseholding farmers. We are aware of the immense pressure on many of the nobility and the higher gentry; but we also know that they have within their grasp an element of bounty, which gives power to the benevolent; they can resolve upon RETRENCHMENT. Thousands upon thousands of tenants are compelled by stern necessity to debar their families of moderate, accustomed comforts; and why should not the superiors of the soil lop off some luxuries in order to enable them to combine justice with generosity? Thus far we appeal to the nobler principles which should actuate the lords of the land at this great crisis; but we should deal deceitfully if we did not plainly tell them that their welfare, their safety, their very power over their possessions is at stake. If another year be suf

fered to pass without ministering relief to their tenantry, the latter will sink into hopeless insolvency. But the land, it may be said, remains to be bid for by other occupiers. Yes, to be ruined in their turn; until at length the destruction of successive tenants reacts upon ruined landlords, and one horrid level of unsparing desolation overspreads the land. This is no figment of a poetical fancy; it is the faithful portraiture of a state of things which is scripturally recorded for our learning, as fearfully resulting from the unjust administration of property.

Having taken the liberty to throw out suggestions to landlords, we crave the same freedom in offering counsel to tenants; and our first admonition would be to eschew the evil practices of anti-cornlaw leaguers, and to abstain from all agitating meetings and concerted combinations. Farmers did not obtain their tenancy by means of mobs, nor by succour of associates, but by quiet negotiation with proprietors. So let it be now. Men may make common cause in the assertion of a principle; but where interests, all differing in degree, are to be adjusted, each case has its peculiar bearings, and must be governed accordingly. Besides, if tenants combine for aggression, landlords will associate for defence, and thus discord will be kindled among parties who can only prosper by means of peaceful union. In this respect, too, the agriculturists may present a favourable contrast to the turbulent movements of the manufacturing classes, which are so frequently convulsed by the combinations of masters, or the strikes of workmen.

The same well-informed agriculturist whom we adverted to in the commencement of this article, offers a suggestion as the general basis of an equitable re-adjustment between landlord and tenant, which we think deserves grave and thoughtful consideration. Our friend proposes that the present money rent should be converted into a grain rent, at the average prices of grain for seven years previous to the passing of the late act; and that the future rents, so converted into grain, shall thenceforth be payable in money, according to the fiars prices in each county where the farm is situated. We give this suggestion in the words which embody it, adding our belief that several farmers of intelligence and experience acquiesce in its soundness and practicability. Our impression is that the annual adjustment of the fiars prices in the Scottish counties affords an admirable machinery for regulating the relations between

landlord and tenant, which is strikingly superior to the vagueness of the English averages.

We conclude by expressing a fervent wish that the Almighty possessor of heaven and earth may so dispose the hearts of men entrusted with the rights and responsibilities of property as to incite and guide them to acts of wise liberality. If Christian equity be disregarded, and sordidness and selfishness shall bear sinister sway—then the supreme PROTECTION of property will be penally withdrawn, and the rich will find too late the fearful force of the divine declaration: Whoso stoppeth his ears at the cry of the poor, he shall also cry himself, but shall not be heard.

HIGH FARMING AND HIGHLAND FARMING: OR BLACKWOOD TURNED

TRIPTOLEMUS.

In common with the bulk of the reading public, we have addressed ourselves to the perusal of our dingy-frontispieced old friend Blackwood, No. 411-in the cheering expectation of finding some racy articles from which extracts might be taken, with the comfortable view of lightening our own literary labours. Blackwood is yet in the prime of life, some thirty-five publishing years -and must not be supposed at all approachable by decline or decay-but still, it never occurred to us that the staid and sober periodical-the only permanent pride of Scottish literature (for the Edinburgh Review has marched off bag and baggage to London head-quarters)-should so far forget its old and venerated vocation, as to discard a host of story-telling, or sonnet-scribbling penmen, and to give us in lieu thereof, 43 double-drilled (we must now

term them) pages on "British agriculture!" Shades of the

clever convivialists who recorded the tap-room revelries of the Noctes Ambrosiana, where are ye? What has become of the countless literati who harassed their brains in concocting "logs" and "cruises," and in ringing the changes upon "Ten thousand a-year" is their "occupation gone?" For what now stares in print before us? neither more nor less than the statistics of nearly all the farm-yards, dung heaps, stall-feeding, and other georgical details throughout the length and breath of bonnie Scotland-together with an immense correspondence furnished by rural worthies, who seem to have exchanged the plough for the pen, and who, for