Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 1.djvu/445

Rh OBSERVATIONS.] AGRICULTURE 409 ment ot her parochial schools, and to the sterling quality ot the elementary education which the children of her tenantry and peasantry have for generations received in these schools together. These schools had unfortunately become inadequate to the increased population ; but still in the rural districts of the Scottish lowlands it is a rare thing to meet with a farm labourer who cannot both read and write. Apart from higher benefits, the facilities which the services of such, a class of labourers have afforded for the intro duction and development of improved agricultural practices, the use of intricate machinery, and the keeping of accurate accounts, cannot well be over-rated. It is an interesting testimony to the value of a sound system of national education that our Scottish peasantry should be in such request in other parts of the kingdom as bailiffs, gardeners, and overseers. Recent legislation warrants the expectation that this inestimable blessing will speedily be enjoyed by our entire population. The pernicious influence of the present law of settlement and removal upon the English labourer is now attracting the attention which it so urgently demands. The pro prietors and tenants of particular parishes in various parts of England at present combine to lessen their own share of the burden of the poor-rate by pulling down cottages and compelling their labourers to reside otit of their bounds. The folly and cruelty of such short-sighted policy cannot be too strongly reprobated. These poor people are thus driven into towns, where their families are crowded into wretched apartments, for which they must pay exorbitant rents, and where they are constantly exposed to moral and physical contamination of every sort. From these com fortless abodes the wearied and dispirited men must trudge in all weathers to the distant scene of their daily labours. One cannot conceive of a prosperous agriculture co-existing with such a system, nor feel any surprise that thieving, incendiarism, and burdensome rates should be its frequent accompaniments. It is pleasant to contrast with this close- parish policy the conduct of some of our English nobility, who are building comfortable cottages and providing good schools for the whole of the labourers upon their princely estates. About the middle of the 18th century, when the old township system began to be broken up, and the land to be enclosed and arranged into compact farms of considerable size, it happily became the practice in the south-eastern counties of Scotland, and a portion of the north of England, to provide each farm with its own homestead, set down as near its centre as possible, and with as many cottages as would accommodate all the people statedly required for the work of that farm. These cottages, always placed in con venient proximity to the homestead, are let to the tenant along with the farm as a necessary part of its equipment. The farmer hires his servants by the year at stipulated wages, each family getting the use of a cottage and small garden rent free. The farmer has thus always at hand a staff of labourers on whose services he can depend ; and they, again, being engaged for a year, are never thrown out of work at slack seasons, nor are they liable to loss of wages from bad weather or casual sickness. This arrangement has the further advantage of the men being removed from the temptations of the village alehouse. So successfully has this system worked that the counties in which it pre vails have long had, and still have, an agricultural popula tion unequalled in Great Britain for intelligence, good conduct, and general well-being. Over a very large portion of Scotland, and more especially in the counties lying betwixt the Forth and the Moray Frith, while the arrangement of farms and mode of management are substantially the same as those of the border counties, there is this marked difference, that the ploughmen as a rule live by themselves in bothies. They are for the most part unmarried men, although not a few of them have wives and children living under the most unfavourable conditions in distant towns and villages ; and so it comes to pass, under this bothy system, that about two-thirds of all the men statedly employed in farm labour are shut out from all the comforts and blessings of family life, and have become in consequence rude, reckless, and immoral. Until a quite recent date this system, because of its supposed economy, was stoutly defended both by landlords and farmers ; but its evil effects have become so manifest as to convince them at last that the system is wrong, and there is now in con sequence a general demand for more cottages on farms. The condition of the agricultural labourers in the southern counties of England has long been of a most unsatisfactory character. The discontent that had long existed among them has at last, in the summer of 1873, culminated in wide-spread combinations and strikes for higher wages and better terms. To a large extent the labourers have been able to make good their demands, although at the cost of much unhinging of old relations betwixt them and their employers, and a great deal of mutual grudging and jealousy. The thorough healing of chronic social maladies is always difficult, and usually demands the patient use of a variety of remedial measures. We venture to express the opinion that much benefit would ensue from the adoption in southern England of the essential parts of the border system, viz., cottages on each farm for all its regular labourers, yearly engagements, and a cow s keep as part of the wages of each family. l Section 5. What the Legislature should do for Agriculture. The further progress of our national agriculture is un doubtedly to be looked for from the independent exertions of those immediately engaged in it ; but important assist ance might be, and ought to be, afforded to them by the legislature, chiefly in the way of removing obstructions. What we desiderate in this respect is the repeal, or at least the important modification, of the law of distraint and hypothec ; the commutation of the burdens attaching to copyhold lands ; the reformation of the law of settlement ; the removal of the risk and costs which at present interfere with the transference of land ; the endowment of an adequate number of agricultural colleges, with suitable museums, apparatus, and illustrative farms ; and the com pulsory adoption of a uniform standard of weights and measures. We desire also to see the arterial or trunk drainage of the country undertaken by government. Until this is done, vast tracts of the most fertile land in the kingdom cannot be cultivated with safety and economy, or attain to the productiveness of which they are capable. It is the opinion of Mr Bailey Denton, the eminent draining engineer, that not more than three millions of acres of the land of Great Britain have yet been drained. Our national interests surely require that its agriculture should be freed from such obstructions as these, and that it should receive the benefit of a fair share of public provision, such as ia made for training youths for the learned professions and for the public service ; and of such grants as are given in aid of scientific research for the encouragement of the fine arts, and for the furtherance of manufactures and commerce. We cannot close this section without referring to another grievance which has long had a most depressing effect on the agriculture of particular districts of our country, and is now, we regret to say, spreading rapidly to all parts of it, 1 For confirmation and full illustration of the statements and opinions in the above section on agricultural labourers, the reader is referred to the reports of, and the evidence collected by, the &quot; Com mission on the Employment of Children, Young Persons, and Women in Agriculture,&quot; in 1S70. I. - 5