Page:The Three Prize Essays on Agriculture and the Corn Law - Morse, Greg, Hope (1842).djvu/13

 cultivation pursued in many parts of England; but I know well how matters are conducted in the best cultivated districts of Scotland, and I should imagine that what is found to answer well in this more northern region, would be found to be equally suitable on the richer soil, and with the more genial clime of England. In Scotland one man and a pair of horses are found amply sufficient to till properly sixty imperial acres, even under the six-course shift, or with one-sixth only in grass. The horses are, of course, kept entirely on the produce of the land, and it matters nothing to the farmer whether the food so consumed by them be either high or low in price. The ploughman himself never, in Scotland, receives his wages wholly in money, but he is oftener paid in full with the produce of the farm, having, besides different quantities of grain, his cow kept, &c. But admitting that his wages are wholly money, and call them 10s. per week, which is the hire for day labourers, who lose time by wet weather and other casualties, this does not amount to 9s. per acre on the sixty acres so managed. And I know, from practical experience, that over a farm under ordinary management, all the other outgoings payable in money, taking wrights', smiths', and saddlers' accounts, cash paid for clover seeds, public burdens, labourers' and harvest wages, need not exceed in amount 15s. per imperial acre; so that this, added to the ploughman's wages, if these are to be paid in cash, amounts to but twenty-five shillings the imperial acre, and which sum would be considerably reduced were there to be a permanent reduction in the price of food. You must consider also, that there are various modes of management, by some of which manual labour may be much more dispensed with than by the six-course shift, which, in Scotland, is reckoned the most expensive rotation. From anything, therefore, that appears, regarding the expenses of cultivation, it is not at all likely that any portion of land now cultivated will be thrown into pasture by any fall in the price of grain. That it may check the rendering waste land arable is conceded, but if it has been already improved, and at present yields sufficient to feed the men and horses employed upon it, and leaves a surplus as rent to the landlord, whatever the price of that surplus may be, it will still continue to do so. Nothing can prevent this except the labourer getting a greater share of the produce, which would be a most decisive proof of the national prosperity. But as beef and mutton always bear a relative proportion in their price to that of grain, so if, from the low price of the latter, land will not yield a rent, the proprietor can hardly expect it from raising the former. In the vicinity of large towns, or in densely populated countries, pasture grass for dairy purposes, and for the