The Farm Labourer as a Skilled Workman. By Frederick Verney.
—" The suggestion is," writes Mr. Verney in this paper, read at the Exhibition of the Royal Botanic Society, " not to make every farm labourer a skilled workman, but to give the best of them the same chance as is given to the best artisans." The machinery used in the one case is to be applied; mutatis mutanclis, in the other. We cannot set forth the scheme in detail, but it has a hopeful look. It is folly, or worse, to affirm that agriculture is prosperous. It is the talking of such nonsense that makes the name of Liberal odious to the farmer. But if there is any chance of Mr. Verney's ideal being reached when "the combination of the scientific farmer and the skilled workman would raise agriculture to a greater pitch of prosperity than has ever been known in England," let the means of bringing it about be carefully considered.
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