AGRICULTURAL DISTRESS.

THERE appear to have been few Prosperity-men on the Agricul- tural Committee; at any rate the majority must have been of the Adversity-party ; for a more comfortless and lugubrious report on the state of a great national interest never was put forth by any set of men for any purpose. The following passage is a fair sample of the Report.

" The average price of wheat for the year 1821 was 54s. lid. per quarter. The average price of the present year is 53s. Id. ; and although some of the charges connected with general taxation have been reduced since 1821, yet the local burdens, such as poor-rate and county-rate, have, in most pal ts of England, been grievously augmented. The Committee of 1821 arrived at the conclusion ' thatthe returns of farming capital were at that time considerable below the ordinary rate of profit;' and no evidence adduced before your Committee of diminisLed outgoings, contrasted with the change of prices in the interval, would warrant, at this moment, a different conclusion.

" The Committee of 1821 expressed a hope ' that the great body of the oc- cupiers of the soil, either from the savings of more prosperous times, or from the credit which punctuality commands in this country, possess resources which will enable them to surmount the difficulties under which they now labour.' Your Committee, with deep regret, are bound rather to express a fear that the difficulties alone remain unchanged, the credit falling, and the resources being pencralla exhausted; and this opinion is formed, nut on the evidence of rent- payers, !nit of many, most respectable witnesses, as well as the owners of land as surveyors and land-agents."

The quantity of grain raised is also said to have decreased ; and the Committee inform us, upon the authority of Mr. JACOB, that if the growth of English wheat should be diminished " by one tenth part of that now produced, we should not be in a safe state in case of a deficient harvest, for all the world could not make up the deficiency.'

The Connnittee further state their " decided opinion,"

"'that the stocks of homegrown wheat in the hands of the farmer and of the dealer at the time of harvest have gradually diminished ; that the produce of Great Britain is, on the average of years, unequal to the consumption ; that the increased supply limn Ireland does not cover the deficiency ; anal that in the present state of agriculture the ITnited Kingdom is, in year,; of ordinary pro- duction, partially dependent on the supply of wheat front foreign countries."

Several cc aeons are then given why the farmer is unable to pro- duce as much grain as formerly. His increased outgoings have not been compensated by a corresponding reduction of his fixed money payments, but the contrary : his poor and county rates are heavier, and the tithe weighs grievously upon him. Then, there are wages, and rent,--but when they reach this ticklish part of the subject, the Committee ask- " Who are to jualTie what profit, rent, and wages ought to be ? Certainly no legislative authority ; for these are matters of convention dictated by the reci- procal convenience of the parties, and, silently indeed, but surely, adjusted by their reciprocal necessities."

It is then suggested, that tithes may be commuted with advan- tage, that the subject of county-rates should be inquired into, and that the support of the poor may be made to cost much less than

44wticn, the fixed incumbrances arc heavy, and the ramilv settlements founded on the war rentals are still in operation, large leduetions of rent must neces-

This, then, is the state of things to which the system of protee-

tion has brought the agricultural interest. A duty of 33.x. tad. per •

insufficient to render our home cultivation even moderately pro- finable. The farmer cries out, that the duty ought to be raised that the food of the community must be taxed still more, or he

at present: but a large reduction from the exorbitant rents now screwed out of the farmers, is a mode of alleviating their distress which the Committee are especially shy of enlarging upon: and with good reascn,—for such reduction, as they intimate in the following paragraph, would render the condition of the landlord little better than that of his half-ruined tenant.

cannot continue to pay rent, wages, and taxes : and it is plain that he cannot. But the other classes of his fellow-suhjects are equally loud and earnest in their asseveration that it vain be im-

possible for them to go on paying rent, wages, and taxes, unless the main stay of human subsistence is afforded them at a cheaper

rate than it is at present. Moreover. they may point to this Report of the A grieultural Committee, and demand a reduction of the duty on foreien wheat, on the very reasonable ground, that the purpose for which the Corn-laws were avowedly imposed—that of render- big u' independent for a. supply Of bread on foreign nations—has not been answered; since it scents that there is nothing to protect

us from flunine, or at any rate grievous scarcity, in ease it should please Providence to visit us with a deficient harvest. So that, after all, we are any thing but independent of foreign nations fora supply of corn. This, we are aware, is no news to those who have paid attention to the subject; but it never was so broadly axon by a Committee of the House of Cotmnons before. Vet, we have no doubt, that a majority of this very Committee would oppose Lord FITZAV I LLI AM'S gradual repeal of the Corn-laws, on the old ground. The Committee which has put forth such a melancholy- repre- sentation of the state and prospects of British agriculture, recom- mend neither an increase nor a diminution of the corn-duties, nor a reduction of rents. But they hope that the county and poor- rates and that tithes may be made to fall more easily upon the farmer. Now, we do not deny that some little relief might be envied him, by judicious improvements in the mode of collecting these imposts; but not such a relief as will help him out of his present difficulties. Let us suppose that a young man with some capital, brought up as a farmer, and free from incumbrances, wishes to take a vacant farm. He looks over it in the first place, and fixes his price upon each acre without regard to poor-rates, county-rates, or tithes. He subsequently ascertains what these are likely to amount to; and makes a conditional bargain for a term of years, if he can, with the parson for the tithe. He deducts these, and a few other regular outgoings, from the rent he offers for the farm. Then comes the struggle.. The agent is told that the highest bidder, who can stock the farm decently, is to have it : there are several competitors in the field, none of them fit for any thing but farming, and few of them understanding how to farm even, except in one county only : intimations are given that Par- liament is to raise the duty on corn next session; and the times when wheat brought 120s. a quarter inflame the recollection of the bidders : a sort of gambling spirit of competition—a determi- nation that his neighbour shall not " cut him out of the farm " —urges on each candidate; and the auction ends in a rent being offered which no tenant can fairly pay or landlord receive. Stich tenanteies as these are of short duration: arrears of rent, dis- tresses, executions, turning out of house and home, and at last breaking stones on the road, follow quickly upon each other ; till the high-spirited English yeoman sinks into the broken-hearted pauper. This is a melancholy picture ; but there is no creature on earth more helpless than a ruined farmer,—in nine cases out of ten, he falls at once from his comfortable and almost elegant house into a mud-hovel.

WIwn a tenant is paying year after year two or three hundred pounds more rent than his farm is worth, the remedies recom- mended by the Committee for the difficulties in which he is in- volved will be hardly worth his notice. It is not proposed that the amount he pays for tithe shall be diminished ; and we must wait for something more definite respecting the hoped-tbr re- duction of poor-rates and county-rates, betbre we call comfort him with the prospect of experiencing substantial relief from that quarter. No—lords and gentlemen may depend upon it, that they have had too great a proportion of the produce of the soil in the shape of rent. The witnesses examined before the Committee were many of them too wary and complaisant to push this truth , home upon the landholders, betbre whom they gave their evidence. i Land-agents and surveyors are the feed attornies of landlords; their business is to keep up rents. It is not unusual, indeed, to ' remunerate them by a percentage upon the amount of the money they collect from the tenants. We have no doubt, that if, instead of land-agents, some fifteen or twenty farmers, paying from 150/. to 1,000/. a year, had given their evidence, there would not have been one wino would not have placed high rents at the very head of the catalogue of evils which weighed them down.

Much is said, in the Report of the Committee, of the high price of labour. From all that we have seen and hearth, we rejoice to ment—no more. He has beef and bacon to his potatoes; which,

in the days of high prices, the halcyon times of Mr. Anavonn and surety ocensioa the most serious embarrassments ; and the effect produced has Bank restriction, he was forced to eat alone. The great demand already been an extensive change of proprietors throughout the kingdom." for labour in our manufactories, has carried off, in most parts of the kingdom, the surplus of our agricultural population : and the

operation of the poor-laws has put the staff into the hands of the quarter, which is the duty at presort oughman, with which lie certainly has belaboured hi betters to t: t levied upon tbreign wheat, is ' some purpose. He thus contrives to get a tolerably fair share of the produce of the earth for his labour ; the landlord, as we have before observed—aided by the jugglers. of the Corn-laws, by which confirm the declaration of the Committee, that, generally speak- ing, the condition of the agricultural labourer is better than it has been for many years, or perhaps at any time his wageS enabling him to procure a greater abundance of the necessaries and comforts of life. Let no one, however, suppose that the labourer is better oil than he ought to be. By constant toil, he obtains food and rai- the farmer is deluded—gets far more than his fair proportion; the poor middleman, or farmer, is the scapegoat, and has the work- house for an asylum.

We agree with the Committee, that Parliament would not act wisely to interfere with rent, profits, and the wages of labour: and while we attribute so large a proportion of the distress by which the occupiers of land are bowed down, to the high price they have to pay fir it, we have no idea of calling upon Parliament to step in to lower that price. But we think, that in an inquiry into the causes of agricultural dietress, high rents she'll,' not have been so Iiguth.• passed over, with all intimation of how much embarrassment it would occasion landed gentlemen to reduce them. Rents must fall in t into, we know, and without the aid it an at of Parliament fin. the present. coinpetition for thrills at ruinous rents cannot last ley ever: but in the meanwhile, the en piial of the farmer is swallowed up by the landlord, who is always: ruined the last of the two. Tin a again, the Corn-laws, so intimately connected with the coedit ito of the fornu,r, amid, as we think, so palpable and pregnant a source o:. injury In hint, are scarcely alluded to in this agrieultural inquiry and report. lletnedia,s, litat can by any stretch or compliment br called such, we may in vain :search for; but in the place thereof, we have the follow 2: paragraph, which we find among the conchul- ing ones of this unsatisfactory and shallow production.

"(In the whole, it must be admitted that the dilliculties are great and the burdens heavy which oppress the landed interests ; but contracts, prices. 504: labour, have a strong natural tendency to adjust themselves to the value ct money, once established ; and it is hoped that the balance may he estored, tvhirn trill give to farming capital its fair return."

It is all very well for the landed gentry to liaee that farming capital will get its fair return; but, melee the present system or high rents and high duties, the hope appears to its miserable and forlorn.