a greater scale than perhaps had ever before been attempted. The immediate contractors with government employed larger capitals; and those again with whom they in their turn contracted for the parts and portions of the articles which they had engaged to furnish, were also men of superior wealth, or, what was almost then equivalent to wealth, of superior mercantile intelligence. The consequence of this was, a greater competition among contractors, and the agent was often found starting against his principal. The effect of this was to draw agricultural produce into great masses, available for any sudden demand, and the farmers who were the feeders of the system, partaking of the profits which this direction of mercantile capital had taken, became in their turn, also speculators, and the facilities of pecuniary accommodation afforded through the means of the numerous fungi of country banks, led them into the mercantile system of bills, and enabled them to keep up their stock from the market till the prices suited their views. Vast masses of agricultural produce were in consequence kept available for the views of contractors; and, perhaps, still greater masses were withheld from market by the effects of the bill and banking accommodations. Thus, in the course of time, between these two, a greater extent of land was brought into cultivation than was requisite for the support of the population of the country. In considering, therefore, the effect of all this on the question of agricultural distress, it may also be assumed, (likewise to be referred to hereafter,)

II. THAT AT THE CLOSE OF THE LATE WAR, THE VALUE OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCE WAS ABOVE ITS LEVEL;

III. THAT THE QUANTITY EXISTING

IN THIS COUNTRY WAS GREATER THAN

THE NATURAL DEMAND; and,

IV. THAT THERE WAS A GREATER EXTENT OF LAND UNDER TILLAGE, AND PAYING RENT ACCORDINGLY, THAN THE ACTUAL WANTS OF THE POPULATION REQUIRED.

It thus appears to me, that the agricultural distress can be quite adequately accounted for by these causes, while it is by no means clear that it can be so well explained by ascribing it to the operation of the taxes, since, under the most extraordinary reduc

tion of taxation in the history of any country, the evil has continued to increase. "The evil is abundance ;" and it can only be cured by a gradual adaptation of the quantity to the demand. But even that will not be enough; the inflated value of the land from speculation, the unsound rentals in consequence, and the expedients of bill and banking accommodation, induced by those speculations, are also evils that must be removed before the landed interest can be restored to its sound and pristine state. And this, I conceive, it is in the power of legislative enactment to accomplish, without violating or interfering with any of the acknowledged principles of political economy. the same time we doubt if any such committee as that which wearied to death poor Londonderry, will be able to comprehend them. Nevertheless, I shall take the liberty to state what occurs to me on the subject.

At

In the first place, then, it is manifestly absurd, and contrary to the nature and fitness of things, that a revenue arising from land should be valued by any other standard than the value of the produce. It would be a waste of words and time to offer any thing in illustration of this. But what is the fact? Is not the present standard of rents from land throughout the kingdom the Mint price of gold? Now, in the name of common sense, in what way is it possible to regulate the fluctuating produce of the earth by the value of a standard so comparatively steady? If the sovereign, we suppose, for the sake of calculation, should happen to represent the value of a quarter of wheat, and we let a certain portion of land, capable of producing a thousand quarters of wheat, for two hundred sovereigns per annum, how is it possible, when, by some failure of the harvest, the land yields only five hundred quarters, that the tenant can afford to pay the rent of two hundred sovereigns? Or, in the event of things being as they now are: If the thousand quarters are reduced, by "the evil of abundance" to be worth no more than five hundred quarters, how can he still afford to give the same rent? The thing is monstrous; and yet it is what is now in existence, and to which the whole attention of the public is called, as if a system so unnatural could by any possibility be preserved.

the value of land was raised above its natural level by the effects of speculation."

I think it must be obvious, that mercantile speculation proceeds on an assumption of one or other of two things, either that the speculator possesses information which has not reached the public, or is of opinion that certain causes are in operation, the effect of which he has more sagacity than his neighbours to see. Now, it is quite clear, that whatever influence sagacity might still be allowed to possess, the speculative influence of superior information would be materially abridged. Every man interested in the price of corn, in land and rents, would have, in the publication of the official averages, a natural and legitimate check on the spirit of the speculator, and the result would of necessity be, a more correct estimate of the value of land, formed from the only valid source, the prices of produce. But it may be said, that this would do very well with respect to the land of the kingdom in general, and that local value would still be as much shrouded, and as much under the influence of the speculator, as ever. Not so; the knowledge of general truth always promotes the knowledge of truth in detail. The official or treasury average would serve as a criterion for rent and salaries specifically, but means would soon be found to ascertain from the returns, the capabilities of the land in the different districts, and a local knowledge, of a comparatively correct kind, would soon be disseminated, the advantages of which would prove alike permanently beneficial to landlord and tenant, and thereby tend to reduce the value of land to its natural level.

My second induction is, "That at the close of the late war, the value of agricultural produce was above its level."

This, as I have explained, was owing to the effect of contractors coming into the market, and to the effect of speculations among the farmers, resulting from the same cause. The main cause has ceased; the contractors are no longer in the market to the same extensive amount, either of means or activity; but the habit of speculation still continues among the farmers, this habit time and losses will gradually cure; but it would be quicker cured, were the state of the

markets more generally known than they are at present. In so far, I therefore consider, that the pressure of the agricultural distress which has arisen from the subsidence of the high artificial and unsound price of produce to its natural state, is in process of amendment, but cannot be amended by any legislative arrangement, save only such as will have the effect of imposing the natural check of superior intelligence on the spirit of speculation.

The influence of time also can alone reduce so much of the evil of abundance as has arisen from the unnatural incitement to over cultivation, produced by speculation. The fall in the value of produce must necessarily induce a diminution in the amount of cultivation,-poor lands must be allowed to lie waste, until the rental of the kingdom has been regulated by some standard, that will enable the farmer to know much more correctly than heretofore, what he can afford to give in rent; and the full effect of any such standard cannot be known, until the unsound and swollen effects of speculation are removed.

But, sir, my subject grows under me; and the ramifications which each new branch seems to send forth, as it is considered, show how unwieldy this great question is for the slight sketches of a Magazine. I have adverted to the absurdity of complaining of the evil of abundance, and yet encouraging emigration. I think it would be trifling with your readers to offer any thing further on this point than the mere statement of the proposition. For I am sure there is not one who will not at once see, that if there is any truth in this alleged abundance, emigration can bave only the effect of increasing the evil. It would seem, indeed, that employment, and not emigration, is what is wanted; that emigration, under these circumstances, is a curse, and an impoverishment of the country; and that any portion of the public revenue which is appropriated to remove consumers from the market of the farmers, is only aggravating the calamity, and that such portions ought rather to be appropriated to public works, in order to detain them at home." which induced the great statesmen of antiquity to build and settle cities, is a branch of political economy that has not received the attention it deserves.

The policy

-Far better it were to devise some means of concentrating into new towns those whom so many theorists have rendered restless, than to squander the public stock on them in settlements in distant islands. Gracious God, is it possible that those who see around their own dwellings so many thousands and tens of thousands of unoccupied acres, can seriously recommend, and not only recommend but assist, the most athletic portion of the population to bring into cultivation the wilds of America and Africa, and of the South-sea Islands! But it is said that the removal of such persons from the country will help to lighten the poor-rates. Here comes the question of taxation again. For the poor-rates may be described as one of the many means evolved out of the state of modern society, to appropriate the vast accumulation of the public stock in this country, in such a manner as to further the improvement of the people. I will not repeat my words; but I state the truth so-and I wish the statement to be received as fully and as broadly as the terms will warrant. But bear in mind, that I do not say the poor-rates are any more than any other tax desirable. At the same time I do not hesitate to say that it would not have been practicable to have brought the stupendous frame of productive machinery in this country to that astonishing excellence, but for the poorrates. But for them the bold and spirited adventurers who established those vast machines, could never have found the means of keeping the capital embarked in their works together, in times when the operations of their business left nothing, or almost nothing, to pay the artizan. During the fluctuations of trade in a time of war, the true nature of the boon that mankind received from the genius of Arkwright and Watt, was not known. It is only in the steady times of peace, when the machinery is allowed to work regularly-not overheated for sudden demands one day, and then left to rust idle the next-that its benefits and blessings will be felt. It is only in peace, when the artizan, enlightened and incited by the enginery among his hands, will find himself yielding to the progressive influence of society, and his faculties enlarged by the reflections which immediate objects awaken, will learn that it is better to husband his little earnings for the SavingsBank than to spend them in the ale

house to raise the price of malt, and thereby to encourage the Country Gentlemen to continue their high rents.

But of all the pendicles of the agri. cultural question, there is no one more fertile in error than the attempt to convert the popular prejudice against machinery into one of the causes of the existing distress among the landed interest. It is felt and acknowledged, that the want of employment for the labouring class is one of the present afflictions of the country; and it is inferred, that but for the machinery this want would not exist. The Country Gentlemen, plausibly enough, imagine that were the labourer more employed, he would eat more quartern loaves, drink more ale, and thereby occasion a greater consumption of agricultural produce, and consequently increase the value of land. But they do not advert to the omission of an important link in the logic of this reasoning. Without question, were the labourer better employed, all these comfortable effects to himself, and beneficial results to the landed interest, would ensue; but is the lack of employment owing in any degree to the machinery? It would seem to be assumed, that it is to a certainty; and therein lies the fallacy of the reasoning; for it should first be shewn in what way the introduction of the manufacturing machines HAS diminished the employment of the labouring classes. That it has a tendency to supersede the hard labour of man, nobody denies; but that it HAS reduced the actual number of persons engaged in the labours of manufacturing, I not only deny, but I will assert the contrary; and without descending into any more minute details, I will appeal, first, to the increased population of the country generally, as substantiated by the parliamentary census; and next to the evidence before the eyes of every man-not resident in the ancient city of St Andrews, or "Provost" Gibson's borough of Culross-in the increased population and improvements of the towns individually: That increase and those improvements are mainly to be attributed to the advantageous introduction of machinery in aid of labour. That neither the one nor the other can be ascribed to any influence of the landed interest or the Country Gentlemen, is, I think, indisputable; for their improvements have had a direct and obvious tendency to reduce the num

ber of hands formerly employed in the labours of the farm. The system of great farms is a Malthusian system; its tendency is to increase the means of subsistence, and to diminish population; and it has had these effects.Hamlets have almost disappeared from the face of the country; and villages have grown into towns, by the dispossession of the rustic population from the homely abodes of their simple and rude forefathers. It is possible, for I will not undertake to assert the contrary, that at the close of the war the number of hands employed in agriculture may have been greater than at any former period in the history of the country; but I will assert, that it was not owing to the agricultural system then pursued, but to the extension of cultivation required for the support of an increasing population, and for the purposes of those speculations to which I have so often referred. In a word, any lack of employment that has been caused by the changes which have taken place in the country, since the inventions of Arkwright and Watt came into use, has arisen from the system of great farms; and if there were any utility to come to the labouring class, or to the kingdom, by raising an outcry against the introduction of inventions and improvements, calculated to lessen the labour of man, that outcry should be directed against the Country Gentlemen, who have depopulated their estates, to make room for the great-farm system. They, and they only, are the class who have lessened the employment of the poor. From them, and them only, the country at this time has a right to demand relief. For, to return to the point immediately under consideration, I would ask, is it not a notorious fact that such HAS BEEN the demand for labourers, created by the use of machinery in manufactures, that the adult population was not sufficient to supply the market, insomuch that children were, in consequence, employed, and to such an extent, that it became an evil, which some years ago required legislative regulation? Now, how could this have occurred, had the introduction of machinery reduced the number of labourers? How could it have happened that, while the Country Gentlemen were remorselessly driving their tenantry like herds of swine into the market towns, and burning and

destroying their cottages, that they might return no more,-how could it have happened, that, while the demand for labourers among the manufacturers was so brisk, as that, even with all those who were driven into them by the great-farm system, they were necessitated to employ children,

how could it have happened that the introduction of machinery had lessened the value of human labour? The fact is, that hitherto the introduction of machinery has had quite the opposite effect, and that it has created many new branches of employment, which were previously neither known nor conceived. The trade of making machines is, for example, a vast and flourishing trade, which, prior to the era of Arkwright's invention of the cotton jennies, and Watt's application of the steam-engine, had no existence. The consumption of timber and of iron, in the preparation and the use of machinery, has given employment to thousands of additional labourers, in the details of the timber and iron trade, above those formerly employed. The construction of buildings for the manufactures and the manufacturer, has called also for new bands of masons, bricklayers, and carpenters. The very glazing of the windows in those buildings has occasioned a demand for new workmen in the glassworks. But, sir, your limits do not permit me to extend my illustrations; and, perhaps, it is better that I should here pause, and allow the reader rather to draw from his own recollections, the countless proofs of this fact, that the demand for labourers has been increased by the use of machinery, than to enter upon any illustrations at all. One word, however, before we part.

There may be some among those, who, while they admit the fact, will contend, that whatever the additional demand once was, which the use of machinery created, it exists no longer; on the contrary, the incitement which it caused for labourers, has had the effect of raising a greater population than can now find employment. sibly there may be some truth in this; possibly machinery may have been carried too far,-for the productive powers of machinery are unlimited, while the demands of mankind are limited, and the increase of wants are of slow developement. But I think there is another cause, which will account

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