AGRICULTURAL ART AND EMPLOYMENT OF THE POOR.

'Ma. HUXTADLE, the practical investigator of agricultural science, is making a great diversion in favour of sound poor-law legislation. When he is bringing the book farming of Liebig and the chemists of the new school and applying it to the soil, at his rectory of Sutton Waldron in Dorsetshire,—doing what is. taught as an example to actual farmers,—he is not only benefit.. ing mankind generally, but is especially facilitating the opera- tions of the legislator in dealing with the Poor-law. When he delivered his "Lecture on the Science and Application of Ma-. nures " in the Town-hall of Blandford, he was easing the ques-, tion of poor-relief, not merely by stimulating the production of food, but by stimulating employment.* Mr. Huxtable is one of the most earnest of agricultural inquirers. Like all the highest investigators, he unites to the power of practical analysis the imaginative faculty that is needed to excite the understanding— that made Columbus imagine the world which he afterwards found by discovery, made -Newton imagine the force which he tested by calculation, Adams and Leverner the planet to which, their intellectual preconception led the eye. But the most ardent imagination, we believe, must fail to embrace in its survey all the social consequencei that will flow from turning agriculture from. rude labour into an art.

One consequence of such -a change must be a revolution in thestate of the labourer. lt,is a remarkable fact, that at the very moment when we are consciously entering upon this change, we can also discern some anticipatory signs of its consequences: A few slight and half-conscious movements in the direction of the change have been attended by the consequences that pertain to it. Striking instances of this will be found in the evidence given by Mr. Chadwick before the Select Committee now sitting on the Law of Settlement. The farmers in many parts of the. country are already imbued with a sense that they must alter and elevate the process of agriculture. The desire for the free use of machinery, impeded by old barbarisms of prejudice and poor-law practice, spreads among them. Its use conduces to a demand for more and better labour. They find that high-priced labour is better than low-priced, even though the individual la- bourer be not changed ; because the higher wages stimulate the men to greater exertion, and also to the exercise of a better in- telligence, so that the work is better done, and is of course more productive. Here is an example— "A friend, a banker, who knew very well the condition of the farmers in the neighbourhood of Leicester, mentioned to me one farmer, a neighbour, who died a few years ego, aged about eighty, having commenced life as a market-gardener, and having accumulated about 100,0001. in laud, chiefly by his trade. it was an a- phorism of this farmer that lie could not live by poor two-shilling men; that he must have half-crowuers: The nephews carry on the farms on the name prin- ciple; they themselves continue the same system, and one of them expressed that strongly; he said, We will not look at those.poor two-shilling devils; we cannot thrive upon their labour. My friend mentions one of these farmers, who, some time ago, when this question was put to him, asserted strongly the same doctrine, that is, the productiveness of well-paid labour, 'and stated that his men earned from 15s. to 20s. per week on his farm; as I demurred to this, he sent me the wages of four of teem fur a year.' (This was a farmer who had made his fortune.) The men were employed chiefly, not wholly, on task-work; and it turned out that Nu. 1 had 531. 15s.; Nu. 2,.431.; No. 3, 421. 12s.; No. 4, 391., as their earnings for the year 1841.'"

Another sample-

"! will quote a letter from an able farmer living at Akehead, near Wigton, in Cumberland. Be says, In forming an opinion as to the comparative value of labour performed by the Northern labourer at 12s. or 14s. per week wages, and that by the labourer in the South at 9s. or 10s., I may at once say, that 1 have often remarked to my brother, in traversing his farm at Great Weldon in Northampr tonshire, that it did not seem to me that the real cost of labour, everything con- sidered, differed materially in the actual remuneration of labour between the North and the South. His reply has been, that the real expense may be about the same, but it does not realty cost me more here than in the South: Then he goal on to say, The precise evils of the South of England, as compared to those ad- vantages we are favoured with in the Sulway Basm, are these. We have uo ex cuts of population—they have; oar labour, though higher in denomination, is by no means dearer in its real sum of work done. Then the whole of their labourers cannot be efficiently employed—ours can, and at one fifth more money wages, and also in breadeworth.' Then he speaks of the great advantage of having the men • This lecture has been published as a pamphlet. It is very interesting, not only as a sign of the very :email kable change to which we allude to the teat, but also as a specific elementary iustruction-book in the use of manures.

living upon the farm. There is one instance which came within my knowledge of agricultural wages paid exceeding any of these. It is of a farm in Middlesex. It was formerly worked by the owner, with parish-labourers at Is. 6d. a day and a pint of porter, and be never could make it answer. It was taken by a new man, a farmer, who farmed 500 acres of it as a potato farm, and he wholly altered the system; he paid it in piece-work, and made it succeed. He died two or three years ago; but he told me before he died that he was making, and had made out of the farm, 2,000/. a year, chiefly, as I understood him, on account of the superior effi- ciency of the labour. His successor has taken it, and, I think, carried the prin- ciple of working with free labour and task-work further, and has taken 200 acres of land in addition. He pays, on that 700 acres, 5,0001. a year in labour. I did not ask Lim his profits, but I have every reason to presume that his profits cor- respond with those of his predecessor. He pays some of his skilled labourers as much as 203. and 24s. a week, and divides amongst families piece-work, dibbling potatoes, and taking up potatoes, paying as much as 30s. a week to families; that is, to three members of a family so employed; and he says he finds such la- bour pay him well, on this same farm, on which the owner could do nothing with the common parish-labour." " What do you mean by 'three members of a family ' ? "-" In dibbling potatoes, the man dibbles, and the wife follows and drops the potatoes; in planting cabbages, a man, his wife, and one of his children will be employed. The farmer's payment

for wages in the season is sometimes 1801. a week. He tells me that other farm- ers, seeing his success, now do the same, and pay even more than he does in the

amount of labour applied to the farm. I know indeed of one instance of a market- gardener cultivating chiefly potatoes, who pays in wages 4,0001. a year for a farm of 400 acres, and pays 3,0001. a year for manure." " When those high wages are given, they have no reference to the family of the man? "-" None at all; they have just as little reference to his family, or to his parochial condition, as the employment of the artisan or the workmen of the manufacturer."

Another yet-

" This is A return of the amount of labour per acre on a farm in West Nor- folk, where machinery is freely employed, showing the gradual increase of manual

labour caused by improved cultivation, &c., from 1772 to 1845. The average per

acre for the thirteen years ending 1785, was 6s. 94.; for the flee years ending 1790, 7s. 2d.; for the five years ending 1795, 8s. 2d.; for the five years ending

1800 Hs.; for the five years ending 1805, 15s. 6d.; for the five years ending 1810. 19s. 64.; for the five years ending 1815, 11. 28. 44.; for the five years end- ing 1820, 11. 3S. 9d.; for the five years ending 1825, 11. 13.; for the five years

ending 1830, 11. 9s.; for the five years ending 1835, 11.3s. 24.; for the five years ending 1840, 11. 3s. 7d.; for the five years ending 1845, 11. 9s. 3d.' That is a light-land farm; but I believe that a similar progression will occur in other places." Rents are materially affected- " The concurrent testimony of all the gentlemen of that class [land-valuers] to whom I have spoken is, that the difference in the value of laud between the

North and the South is mainly dependent on the conditions as to labour. One of them mentioned that he had let an estate in Scotland on a long lease for 2,2001., and that he bad let one of exactly the same description of land, under the same circumstances as nearly as could be, here in the South, for 9001., and that differ- ence be ascribed mainly to the difference in the labour; of course, probably in some degree to the habits of the farmers too, but mainly to the inferior labour and the inferior cultivation."

Mr. Chadwick mentions. another instance, in which a tenant paying 3s. a day for labour, instead of ls. 6d., pays more than double rent-4l. for land that under common circumstances would certainly not yield more than half that amount. One great obstacle to the employment of free labour is the law of settlement, which converts the condition of the pauper into a

kind of ascriptio parochite. He knows that he must be employed,

and feels no motive to exertion. On the contrary, he is cramped by three things,-by his ignorant dulness ; by an idea that if he

does more than a minimum of work he is taking a part of his

fellow's share ; and that his employer.does not like him to earn more than a minimum of wages. This latter supposition, no doubt, has been true. But opinion within these few years has rapidly gained ground among farmers. For instance, in the Board of Guardians for the Union of Docking, an agricultural district in Norfolk, Mr. Blyth, the Chairman, has carried, by 31 to 2, resolutions to unite the parishes for the purpose of settle- ment, in order to the freer circulation of labour. In December 1844, Mr. Blyth could only find 10 supporters in a Board of 34. The difference seems to be entirely due to an advance of opinion as to the economical value of free labour. Mr. Blyth adduces the advance of opinion as proof that "farmers are getting a better insight into the principles that govern the employment of men in the cultivation of land." The like feeling exists in Lincoln- shire, in Warwickshire, and elsewhere-wherever farming shows signs of progress. The Tenant Farmers Club held a meeting in London, for some days, about the beginning of March ; and among the speakers was Mr. Chadwick, who attended by invita- tion, and made a statement on the value of freely-circulated and well-paid labour. The farmers responded by furnishing evidence of their own in support of that view ; and subsequently the Club passed a resolution for abolishing the law of settlement, in order to the thorough emancipation of labour. These are signs of the beneficial consequences even while farm- ing is in that very infant state that is now so.generally recog-

nized. Mr. Huxtable, Professor Johnston, and other disciples. of

tiebig, are teaching the farmer to recognize every element of sustenance, whether for vegetable, for beast, or for man, and to trace it throughout the ceaseless round of its circulation, as ma- nure, as artificial earth, (that is, earth of natural elements brought together by art,) as vegetable, as flesh, so that none be wasted or neglected. When he has learned his lesson, the farmer will have

made each inch of land produce vastly more than it does; it will be worth more-pay more rent : he, the farmer, will have become a manufacturer, making the profits of trade, and raised from that

depressed condition which farming has so long bemoaned ; and the agricultural manufacturer will need a new class of labourers

-the labourers will have become artisans, with the wages of artisans, and more to do at those wages. This is the process by Which the agricultural reformers are relieving the pressure on the Tonr-law, questions.