Part 5 — CAIRD'S HIGH FARMING HARROWED. (continued 2)

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.

I have been exceedingly edified and amused with the manner in which you have expounded the theory of rotation. "The slavish adoption of fixed rules of rotation are suited only to a comparatively low state of agriculture. Nature has no rotation of crops—the plant bursts from the earth, grows, bears its produce, and drops the matured seed to reproduce itself beside the root of the parent stem. The skilful gardener lays none of his land to rest in grass," (p. 17.) This may be fine writing, but it is unmitigated nonsense. Nature has a rotation of crops; and from nature the agriculturist took the hint, and got his teaching. The distribution of that part of the indigenous flora of a country which constitutes its annuals, is ever liable to vary. Nature's annual weeds flourish for a while in the same spot; but, having exhausted the peculiar nutriment in the soil which sustained them, they degenerate and migrate to a fresh locality. The plants which the farmers grow are chiefly annuals. But, in fact, two crops of the same kind of wood on the same soil is not according to the arboriculture which nature teaches. "The plant bursts from the earth, grows, bears its produce, and drops the matured seed to reproduce itself." Well, and what then? Can the farmer take the lesson? Is it not with this very habit of nature that his art must wage an incessant warfare? The skilful gardener has a rotation of crops, although he grows none of the cereal tribes, which especially rejoice in the alternative system of husbandry; and if the skilful gardener does not lay down "his land to rest in grass," his costly substitute is to trench his plot every fourth or fifth year to the depth of three or four feet, and thus to invigorate the wearied soil, by amalgamating it with fresh mould. The exhausted surface, the Auchness experimenter is compelled to remove. It is not very accurate to speak of the farmer "laying his land to rest in grass." He puts it under grass as an improving crop, and one which a system of agriculture cannot dispense with—a crop, too, which in many situations yields a larger free profit than he could otherwise raise from the land.

I do not remember of ever meeting with more ignorance of botany, vegetable physiology, and horticulture, condensed into a shorter space than you have succeeded in cramming into the few sentences just quoted. But, in a brave contempt of what you had written, you tell us, on the very next page, that you "do not mean to say that the system of rotations has been without its use." And you add, that "the average agriculture of Scotland has undoubtedly been improved by it." And it is with such absurd and solemn see-saw that you enlighten the agricultural world. If a rotation of crops has improved the average agriculture of Scotland, that demonstrates the excellence and necessity of the system. It is average results that anything deserving the name of a system can alone secure. Agricultural reformer as you are, I would respectfully suggest that you must, if you wish to effect any good, legislate for an average measure of agricultural character and skill. The farmers of the kingdom are an immensely numerous body, and you cannot expect them to be all men of genius. Let your philanthropy prompt you to stoop for a time from your transcendental height, that you may minister to the wants of average humanity.

I am not surprised that you are angry with Peter Plough. This is very excusable. You had said in your first pamphlet, (p. 28,) that it was demonstrable that, if all the arable land in the same parish were cultivated as the Auchness farm was, immense benefits would accrue to the people. Mr Plough's expansive patriotism was not to be limited by the parochial boundaries, and he determined, if possible, to give the benefits of the system to the whole of the kingdom. With this view, he instituted an inquiry, for the purpose of ascertaining whether the Auchness system was capable of general adoption. Nothing could be more fair. You had, in fact, challenged the inquiry, by representing high farming as the substitute for Protection. Peter Plough, by a cogent and crushing demonstration, proved the utter inapplicability of the Auchness system for general adoption. He has impaled you on the horns of a dilemma, and no wonder that you are writhing in anguish. You try to smile, but, alas! it is too evident that your laugh is like that of the third ruffian in the melodrama, when the skeleton is discovered in the closet, and supplies the last link in the chain of circumstantial evidence. Manifestly the salt tears are seen to trickle over your abashed countenance.

Peter Plough understated his case. Include Ireland in his calculation, and adopt the more recent statistics of Porter, giving the increase in the mercantile navy, and Mr Plough's demonstration remains intact and impregnable. He had shown that, to apply the Auchness system to British husbandry, thirty-eight millions of additional capital would be required by British farmers, for the feeding stuffs and artificial manures; and he naturally asked where this "sum of money was to be got?" "And pray, good Peter, where is it to go?" you respond. Why, certainly, the first question in order of time and of prudence is, where is the money to be got?—unless, indeed, it be part of your system to make your money go before it be got! When you tell us that every ounce of the feeding stuffs used at Auchness was raised on British soil, you forget and misstate. The lintseed, (p. 21, first pamphlet,) and the oilcake, (p. 23, second pamphlet,) are not of British production. The bruised oats and bean meal for the cattle, and the supplemental quantity of oats for the servants and horses, may be indeed of British production—although not grown on the farm of Auchness. But how long, think you, are farmers to grow these grains at a loss, to benefit the Auchness factor? He is dependent upon others for his supplies of these feeding stuffs.

Peter Plough has, in fact, compelled you to eat your leek, for you now tell us that the high farming at Auchness is, "as an example, to be taken in the spirit more than in the letter." What! have you forgotten that you set it forth "as the Substitute for Protection?" and that, if your language had any meaning, you intimated that its virtue would be equipollent and co-extensive with that of the plundered crutch? And now, forsooth, you veer about, with slippery versatility, and tell us that you are to be "read in the spirit more than in the letter." When such grave interests are at stake, this seems to me intolerable trifling, although no doubt it provides a door of escape for you, whatever disaster may attend the adoption of your expedient. In every such case the model will have been copied with a servility too literal, or a liberality too latitudinarian; and there seems nothing for it but that the bewildered husbandman, before he embarks on the career of high farming, and runs the risk of mistaking the letter for the spirit, shall make a pilgrimage to Baldoon and consult the oracle, and ask the author to interpret his impenetrable text.

Whether it pleases you or not, this question must be agitated and tested, and sifted and probed to the very bottom—namely, Is the mode of farm management pursued by Mr M'Culloch upon Auchness capable of being adopted in the general cultivation of the land of the country? This is the only question at all interesting to the agriculturists of the kingdom—the only question at all germane to their present position. If this is not meant, your high farming is a childish bauble. Its value, not only as a substitute for Protection, but as an instructive lesson in husbandry, must be determined by a correct solution of the preceding query. We find, then, upon a farm of 260 acres, that crops 1848 and 1849 give an average extent of 81 acres under grain, 48 acres in grass, and 131 acres in green crops; and of the latter, 78½ acres are potatoes all to be sold off.

We also find that 130 cattle, and about 190 sheep, are annually fattened upon the farm. The large extent of the green crop, and the quantity of cattle fed, are the salient and prominent features of the system. This you admit, I am therefore taking you in the spirit more than in the letter. Is a system, embracing such a disproportion between its root and grain crops, adapted for extension? Try its effects upon a small scale—extend it over a district of the average extent of Scotch counties, and inquire what would be the result. You will find that there would be a produce of about 301,417 tons of potatoes, 114,845 fat cattle, and 167,788 sheep—a produce more than equivalent to supply every town in Scotland with potatoes and butcher meat. Or, to indulge your parochial partialities, let us inquire what would be the results if one farm in every parish in the kingdom were farmed according to the Auchness fashion. In England, Wales, and Scotland, there are 11,583 parishes. We would have of "edible roots" i. e. potatoes, 4,633,200 tons, after allowing an equal quantity to be destroyed by the rot, as apparently happened at Auchness last year. Of wheat, 2,782,816 qrs. Of fat cattle, 1,505,790. Of fat sheep, 2,409,264—and a snug little money profit from hoggets and cows, young horses and ewes, of some ten millions. A small model farm in each parish of the island can supply its present population with beef and potatoes, and leave of the latter a liberal supply to the Rector's "generous pigs." Double our population, and add another model farm to each parish, and the wants of "the million" are forthwith supplied. Avaunt Malthus! all hail, Caird! "A plethora of beef, a plethora of vegetables," you facetiously exclaim. You have not considered that there may be a plethora of food, with concomitant destitution, nay starvation, amongst the poor and unemployed. Read the Irish correspondence of the Morning Chronicle, and the Clare Journal for February, and you will find that the two things actually co-exist at this moment in some parts of Ireland. But the next inquiry is, Would there be a plethora of profit as well as of food? Would the balance-sheet do, and would "change the figure" not be the instant cry? Suppose the potato epidemic to pass away, or allow even the present supplies of that root and of butcher-meat from other sources to be continued, would potatoes bring 30s. per ton, and beef 4d. per lb? It is not in the least degree probable. Is it not certain, too, that there would be such a demand for foreign manures as would raise their price beyond the possibility of profitably using them?

But perhaps this is copying the model too servilely. Well, modify it to such an extent as to preserve in operation the leading principles of the system—which is based upon cattle-feeding and potato culture to an extent wholly out of proportion with the other products of the farm—and the system will still prove self-destructive, inasmuch as its tendency must be to increase the cost of production, and to lower the value of the produce raised. With regard to the cost of production, Table ii. in your "addition" (4th ed. p. 40,) enables us readily to test the question. It appears that Mr M'Culloch's "expenditure per acre for labour, artificial manures, purchased food, and expenses of management," exceeded the average expenditure of Messrs Watson, Dudgeon, and Christopher by £3, 11s. 7¾d. Now you tell us from Porter that, of garden and tillage lands in Great Britain, there are 13,637,320 acres. To bring up these—which, however, include Auchness—to the mark of the Auchness system at a farther expenditure of £3, 11s. 7¾d. per acre, an additional capital of £48,852,857, would be required by British farmers. And this is "High Farming farther illustrated!" and you correct Peter Plough by adding eleven millions to his estimate of the new capital required! I am here stealing a leaf from the book of Peter Plough; but, if you will not allow us to look at your case in this light, it is not worth a moment's notice. If the system cannot be reduced to practice, why tantalise the farmer by bringing the cup to his lips, but denying him the power of slaking his thirst?

You seem to think that you have communicated new and invaluable information to the practical farmer, and you "challenge Mr Stephens, within the whole compass of his two thousand pages of letterpress, to exhibit an instance equally instructive," (p. 27.) What is it that is so new? Is it the value of manure and its extensive application that constitutes the novelty, now for the first time made known? The ancient Romans anxiously collected their manure from as many sources as the moderns do. They liberally employed liquid manure and pigeons' droppings, (your guano,) then esteemed of inestimable value. Or, is it the stall-feeding system that you publish as something so new and instructive? Why, the Metayers of Lombardy have long fed their cattle in a somewhat similar fashion, but with more extraordinary care. They feed them in stalls—they bleed them—they brush them twice a-day, whether with "a dandy brush" or not is not recorded, and they rub them over with oil. The oleaginous application is something more exquisite than the Auchness system administers. There is, in truth, nothing new in what you have written, as every educated agriculturist knows; and you might have found your "instructive instances" almost in any history of agriculture in any one of our Cyclopedias. When I consider this, I have been forcibly reminded of the valorous exploits of the immortal hero of one of Sir Walter Scott's best poems, which the bard thus commemorates,—

You apparently now stand alone and unsupported in your advocacy of high farming, foolishly so called, as the substitute for Protection, and as a source of profitable investment under the depressed prices of agricultural produce. "The leading organ of the Protectionists," is so heterodox in your estimation, that one cannot expect you to imbibe wisdom from such a source. But perhaps you may listen more benevolently to the other powerful and accredited organ of political opinion in North Britain on the question of high farming, and the possibility of its adoption as a present remedy for the clamant evils under which the agricultural community now labours. You will do well, before you write again, to ponder over and inwardly to digest the following pregnant sentences, which embody an admirable synopsis of the truth. The italics are mine.

"It is true, that high farming can maintain a large labouring population; but high farming requires, not only that high scientific knowledge which is of slow growth, but also a large expenditure of capital. It is the possession of great skill, habitual energy, and vast capital, which alone renders possible such a system of farming, horticultural rather than agricultural, as has grown up in Belgium in the midst of abundant markets, wealthy towns, and flourishing manufactures,—a system the origin and growth of which has been favoured by every circumstance that can promote industry and protect its fruits."—Edinburgh Review, January 1850, (p. 18.) Mr Mechi speaks problematically of the profit of high farming; that amiable experimenter, Mr Huxtable, ingenuously confesses his losses, and allows that last year he was minus £32 of his rent; Mr M'Culloch even seems half disposed to leave you in the lurch. He is reported, in the Scotsman of the 13th February last, to have said at a public meeting in Newton-Stewart, on the 1st February,—"That, before the improved system could be properly carried out, the landlords must give encouragement particularly in draining and buildings." Millions of money, which the proprietors have not, must be expended; and millions of additional capital must be at the command of the farmers, which they have not, before the system can be carried out. Enthusiast although he be, Mr M'Culloch begins to see the impracticable nature of the scheme. Moreover, before the improvements could be effected, supposing the requisite capital to be had, and before any profit could accrue from them, years would elapse. For the improvements and profits of agriculture, unlike those in manufactures, cannot be realised in a few months. The farmers, with a continuation of the present prices, will in the mean time be ruined, unless rents are diminished one-third, and, on the poorer soils, extinguished altogether—in which event, again, two-thirds of the proprietors of the kingdom would be ruined. These are the immediate accompaniments attending your cheap food for the people, your plethora of potatoes, and your plethora of beef. The ultimate issue will speedily reach the people whom you delude, and the Manchester Free-traders whose sweet voices you court.

But you have further shown us, that there is a necessity for the compulsitor of an act of Parliament to nullify existing leases, and to establish the conditions of the liberal covenant, and that a change of the figure in the rent is imperiously called for. In other words, you prescribe not for the existing condition of agriculture, but for an imaginary case of your own construction. Your views are based on hopes and contingencies vague and visionary. Your theory, as further illustrated, avowedly contemplates a possible case, which not only does not exist, but which is a moral impossibility. That such views should have attracted any notice, and raised any serious discussion, the critical emergency of the times, as already stated, sufficiently explains. Drowning men catch at straws; and, during the prevalence of an inscrutable pestilence, the afflicted and excited sufferer, loth to relinquish the hope of life, flees to any doctor, however quackish and empirical. The practical agriculturists of the kingdom have made up their mind upon the practicability and general utility of your schemes; and, while frankly allowing that much remains to be done for the further advancement of agriculture, and that high farming, in any profitable or practicable sense, is indispensable, they unanimously repudiate the utopianism of your theory as a cure for the dire evils into which, by no fault of their own, they have been plunged. The Perthshire farmer, the only brother tenant of whom you have spoken in the language of civility, and who, in his judicious pamphlet, had shown that Mr M'Culloch, in 1848, must have lost by his farm, repels your advances, and scorns your supercilious compliments. He writes, that "he would far rather have received Mr Caird's buffet than his embrace." (Stirling Journal, 15th February.)

You are now "left alone in your glory;" but that glory is neither small nor contemptible. By that portion of the press who are fired with a hatred of landlordism, and who have taken a vow to sacrifice the agricultural classes to the cupidity of the master manufacturers, you are praised and flattered as the only man of mark and likelihood in North Britain. Although Adam Smith, and more recently M. de Tocqueville, have given it as their opinion that the agricultural classes are more intelligent and intellectual than the manufacturing, yet there is a section of "the fourth estate" in the realm, who cannot speak of farmers without employing insulting epithets derogatory to their intelligence and education. With this fraternity you are an especial favourite; and not without cause. They are wise in their generation, and they see well enough that your speculations, as those of a farmer, serve their purpose better than any of their own could possibly do. They perceive that your Georgical essays are raising delusions in the minds of the ignorant, and bolstering up the vain hopes of Free-trade proprietors, and pandering to the agrarian passions of the unprincipled, and are thus admirably calculated to divert attention from the clamant sufferings of the agricultural community, and to stifle any attempt to devise a real remedy for them. I am sure that, in your heart, you mean none of these things; but it is surprising that the fulsome praises of such parties, and their enlistment of you into their ranks, have not raised a suspicion in your mind regarding the tendency of your writings, and the somewhat dubious and equivocal position which you now occupy.

That powerful print, the Times, disparages the intelligence of farmers, and writes with levity on the subject of their present sufferings. If landlords and tenants cannot prosper under present prices, it tells them cavalierly to sell off, and to emigrate. Surveying them and their fields, it kindly intimates—

Seated beside the Thunderer, you are to dispense the award to agricultural mortals. Have pity on your frail and erring brethren, and wield not the giant's strength tyrannically. But your faculties are as great as your fame; and as Julius Cæsar, in the midst of preparations for battle, marked the revolutions of the stars, so you, in the interval that elapses betwixt the publication of your high farming essays, take a glance at Ireland, and solve the enigma that had puzzled all preceding statesmen, and prescribe the cure for the chronic ailments of our unhappy neighbour. With a few flourishes of your pen, you have slain Blackwood and all his allies. The mind is proud of its triumphs in proportion to the reputed greatness of what it has overcome. Plutarch, in his life of Artaxerxes, tells us of a soldier who wounded King Cyrus in battle, and who grew thereupon so arrogant that in a short space after he lost his wits. I fear for you, even in the midst of your triumphs, for you are manifestly perturbed. At a time when every one had treated you with unexampled gentleness and courtesy, you complain of being upbraided, and of having lost the smiles of men of rank. Can it be that the monitor within is pricking you for your left-handed advocacy of the farmers' interest? The taint of a green and yellow melancholy is on you. That curious old writer, Felix Plater, tells us, with high humour, of a certain one who fancied that he had some of Aristophanes' frogs in his belly, and who studied physic seven years, and took the tour of Europe, with a view of relieving himself. Your itinerancy may be salubrious, and tend to evacuate the croaker. But if not, happy are you to have such a doctor—the crutch-destroyer, I mean—as your "guide, philosopher, and friend." By his nimble manipulations, he will easily effect the happy exorcism of every obstruction; and, having him as your Mæcenas, well may you feel

If I have contributed in any degree, by this agreeable epistle, to abate and dissolve your present flatulency, it will be a source of delightful reflection to me in the evening of life.

Cato.