soil, while the sinking prices of produce bid defiance to remunerative returns? After sifting the statements of Mr Caird-of that reverend and jocular feeder of hogs, rejoicing in the name of Huxtable-of Blackwood's "Two wealthy farmers," whose petty profits would hardly be enough to maintain bothies for their families-the common-sense conclusion at which we arrive, negatives all notion of any one being able to pay high rents by means of high farming. And here we are landed in the region of truth and certainty as to the alleviation of agricultural distresses. Nothing short of a just, reasonable, universal reduction of rents, can be of the slightest service to tenant-farmers. And to avert this honest, imperative adjustment, all the evasive trickeries of unrelinquishable covetousness are employed with cunning diversity. In a large number of landlord cases this crafty avoidance of justice takes the shape of liberality, and we read of proprietors who, on the full amount of rent being paid, return some 5 or 10, or 15 per cent. to the punctual tenants. But this is rank imposture. The tenant has been compelled to collect a sum sufficient to discharge his whole amount of rent, and in a vast number of instances he has had to make forced sales of his produce or stock to meet his landlord's audit, and he pockets this returned per centage-and plods homeward a beggared man! Another evasion (not to use Dickens's favourite slang, dodge), is the Drayton-Manor beneficence, that magnificent model of bounty set forth in Sir Robert Peel's recent manifesto, and of which this is the sum. Every tenant must pay his whole rent, and his high rent, twice in each year, and when so paid to me, I, Robert Peel, will mentally set apart 20 per cent. of said rent, to improve my farm-for I prefer yearly te nants, who are welcome to quit when they choose, or still better when I choose!" This is the veritable version of the pith and core of Sir Robert Peel's comfortable letter to his Staffordshire tenants; and a more barefaced mockery of justice and generosity, never proceeded from the most consummate masters of subterfuge. A portion of an exorbitant rent is to be arbitrarily expended by Sir Robert Peel's agent upon a farm which Sir Robert Peel's tenant has not an iota of permanent interest in! And as to Sir Robert's offer to give leases, the deception is still more striking; for the high-rented tenant bound down by a lease, would be in a worse plight than the hard-pressed holder of land who has a way of escape from year to year. Sir Robert Peel lectures his de

pendants on the benefits of abundant capital, increasing skill, and untiring industry, and calls upon them to pay the same rents that signalised the days of protection-said protection having been annihilated by Sir Robert himself! It would weary the patience of our readers to recite a tithe of the unworthy cheats practised upon the class of tenant-farmers in order to stir them up to seek relief in every quarter except where it can be really obtained. In England, the tenants are stimulated to demand a revival of protection-for they dare not ask their landlords to lower rents. In Ireland, the insolvent landlords are the bawlers for protection, whilst the ruined tenants are clamouring for a reduction of rents, which they cannot get. Look where you may, there is nothing but inconsistency, confusion, and extravagant expectation—for the delusion spreads wildly and widely that men's interests cannot be promoted but by means of leagues, committees, public meetings, and petitions to the Queen! The trading agitators are in full function

Fire in each eye, and papers in each hand,

They rave, recite, and madden through the land!

All the artifices of faction are employed, and for what? why, in reality, to subserve the sinister purposes of some unscrupulous party hoping to attain power and public pelf by the help of a popular outcry!

It is, after a clear, sober survey of the present tumultuary proceedings on all sides, that we warn our farmer friends of the danger which menaces them by means of public meetings. Let every tenant explore his own position, and he will be convinced that the grievance under which he groans is not removable by a return to protection. What the larger farmer requires is such a reasonable rate of rent, as would enable him to cultivate land with a certainty of honestly-deserved profit, in just proportion with the skill and capital which he puts forth. What the small holder requires is not only the same reasonableness of rent-but a sufficiency of land-for the beggarly limit of land assigned to crofters in the Highlands would be dear at the very lowest rent. It is in this way that the poor Sutherlanders, for example, are mercilessly mocked. The "good Duke" grants a sort of pauper plot to a miserable crofter at a low rent, but the factor inexorably interposes to prevent any enlargement of the holding, where the poor industrious creature struggles and starves! So inseparably con

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 peculiar 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