Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 1.djvu/448

Rh 412 stances, as a. guide to follow or a beacon to avoid. Every one interested in such matters knows how much has been done in this way by successive Dukes of Bedford and Portland and Marquesses Townshend ; by the late Earls of Leicester and Scarborough and Earl Spencer ; and by the present Earl of Ducie and Earl Grey ; nor are there many ways in which a landed aristocracy can better rebut the reproach of inutility than by thus doing honour to agriculture, and having the honour reflected tack on themselves. As already hinted, however, it is only on condition of being con ducted with adequate capital that large farming can succeed. True, with deficient capital small farming could succeed no better, per haps indeed not so well ; but then there is much more danger of the needful capital being wanting to a large farmer than a small one. Whatever, from 5 to 20, be the desirable proportion per acre, the number of persons possessing the 50 or 200 required for stocking a farm of ten acres is likely to be everywhere many times more than fifty-fold that of those possessing the 2500 or the 10,000 which a single farm of 500 acres would require. Besides, in coun tries abounding with fortunate individuals able to count their pounds sterling by the thousand, promising modes of investing such considerable sums abound proportionally; and even in a country so exceptionally rich as our own, the number of capitalists prepared to invest their thousands in farming is sadly below the number of farms which would be all the better for having the same thousands so invested. We are justified then by experience in saying, that wherever large farming is the rule, there will probably be very many farmers without adequate capital. Now, in agricul ture, inadequate capital means, among other things, insufficient live stock and insufficient manure, and, as an inevitable consequence, defective crops. It means, in short, imperfect cultivation. III. From these premises it would apparently result that small farmers will generally be more nearly pro vided with the capital required for their business than large ones; and such seems to be actually the fact where- ever peculiar circumstances have not been at work as pre ventives. It is not indeed so in Ireland, where feudal oppression or anarchy, alternating with alien misrule, has in all generations made destitution the heritage of the peasantry. Neither is it so in France, where the swarms of petty landholders had little of either precept or example to teach them that to employ their spare napoleons in thoroughly cultivating the few acres they already possess, would be a much better investment of their money than the purchase with it of an additional acre or two to be as imperfectly cultivated as the rest. In England the system of small cultivation, strictly so called, has probably ceased to exist, now that amateur farming has come so much into fashion, and that the instances have become comparatively so numerous of men of considerable substance turning to fanning for a livelihood. It will not, however, help us much, when endeavouring to ascertain the relative merits of two rival agricultural systems, to contrast good specimens of the one and bad specimens of the other. If we would accurately gauge their respective capabilities, we should take them both at their best, and the comparison here of large with small farming will accordingly be of the former as it presents itself in England, and of the latter as developed in Flanders. Now, in the territory first named the average capital of occupants of 100 acres and upwards would certainly not be understated, and would probably be materially overstated, at 6 per acre; yet M. de Laveleye, while giving 8 as the average for Flanders (where the medium size of farms is but 7 acres in the western, and no more than 5 acres in the eastern province), adds that good farmers, judging of others by themselves, would call that sum much too low even for an average; and further remarks that, although a small tenant may, on entering, have only 8 an acre, the additions he is con tinually making to his live stock, and his continually increasing purchases of manure, commonly raise the 8 to 16 before the expiration of his lease. He also informs us that in other Belgian districts in the Hesbayan portions of Brabant and Hainault, whereof one-sixth is occupied by farms of 100 acres and upwards, and in the Condrusian portion of the province of Namur, where farms of 250 and iipwards are pretty numerous a fanner s average capital is estimated at between 5, 12s. and Q, 8s., and between 3 and 4 per acre respectively. True, as already intimated, there are certain descriptions of stock on which the small farmer s expenditure must necessarily somewhat exceed his rival s ten Flemish farmers of 10 acres each being probably obliged to keep ten horses, while an Eng lish farmer of 100 acres might not perhaps have occasion for more than a pair, reducing also his number of carts, ploughs, and the like, in similar proportion. But after all reasonable deduction on this account, the balance of capital remaining for the purchase and maintenance of those animals and materials of which no farmer ever has too many or too much, is in general much greater in the Fleming s case than in the Englishman s. &quot; It would startle the English farmer of 400 acres of arable land,&quot; said Mr Rham forty years ago, &quot; to be told that he should constantly feed 100 head of cattle, yet this would not be too large a proportion if the Flemish system were strictly followed, a beast for every 3 acres being a common Flemish proportion, and on very small occupations, where spade husbandry is used, the pro portion being still greater. &quot; That the occupier,&quot; he pro ceeds, &quot;of only 10 or 12 acres of light arable soil should be able to maintain four or five cows may appear astonish ing, but the fact is notorious throughout the Vaes country. 1 These statements are of somewhat ancient date, but are still as applicable as ever. During a recent tour through Belgium, the present writer visited two farms near St Nicolas, in the Pays de Waes the first two that came in his way. On one, of 10 acres, he found four cows, two calves, one horse, and two pigs, besides rabbits and poultry. On the other, of 38 acres, one bull, six cows, two heifers, one horse, and seventy-five sheep these last, however, being allowed, in addition to what they got on their owner s ground, the ran of all the stubbles in the commune; the whole commune, on the other hand, being allowed the use of the bull gratis. A few days later the writer went over a fann a few miles from Ypres. On this, of 32 acres in extent, he counted eight cows, six bullocks, a calf eight weeks old, and four pigs. To possess plenty of live stock is to possess in an equal abundance the first requisites of sustained fertility. &quot;No cattle, no dung; no dung, no crop,&quot; is a Flemish adage; and the wealtliiest of English agriculturists are less prodigal of manure than the Flemish peasantry. Mr Caird, in his instructive and interesting treatise on English Agriculture, cites as something extra ordinary that, for a farm six miles from Manchester, manure should have been bought at the rate of 1 2 or 1 3 tons an acre ; but this, which in England passes for lavishness, might seem more like niggardliness in Flanders; for there from 10 to 15 tons of good rotten dung and 10 hogsheads of liquid from the urine tank, per acre, are quite common sacrifices and libations to the Sterculine Saturn, and some 30s. worth of purchased fertilisers bones, wood-ashes, linseed-cake, and guano are not unfrequently superadded. Nay, when potatoes are the crop for whose increase the deity is invoked, GO tons of manure per acre are no unusual quantity to lay on. The holder of the farm of 32 acres near Ypres, just alluded to, assured the writer, in his land lord s presence, that, over and above what his own cattle supply, he purchases manure to the value of no less than 200 annually. One of the respects in which small culture has been admitted to stand at some disadvantage in comparison with large is that of division of labour ; but against whatever loss of time or even infe riority of skill may result from the necessity there is for each of the labourers engaged in the former culture to occupy himself with a variety of operations instead of confining himself to one, are to be set the additions voluntarily made to the labour employed, and also its superior heartiness. The tillage of a small farm ia executed often entirely, and always in great measure, by the farmer himself and the members of his family ; and when these have adequate security that the entire increase of the soil, over and above a specified