Page:The Three Prize Essays on Agriculture and the Corn Law - Morse, Greg, Hope (1842).djvu/17

 which so economises labour, while his rent was liable to be raised upon him the next year, or he himself be turned to the rightabout? Assuredly Scotsmen would hardly think any land worth occupying without a lease, unless at such a rent as would be little more than an acknowledgment of the landlord's superiority. It is these leases giving a temporary property in the soil, a property that is heritable, though not alienable, which has been the main spring in raising Scottish husbandry to the position it now holds.

There is one argument in favour of Free Trade, which will reach both the judgment and the feelings of every farmer who is a parent. What is to become of our sons and daughters, if the manufactures and commerce of the country cease to offer an opening for them? Farmers' sons cannot be all farmers, nor can their daughters all find settlements amongst their own class. We cannot, like the privileged orders, quarter our younger sons upon the State, or find them employment in the army, church, or colonies. They must push their fortunes in trade. A farmer with six children may probably keep a son and a daughter at home; but the other four will, in all probability, depend for their prospects in life upon the prosperity of trade and manufactures. In such a case, the family are more interested in trade than farming, in the proportion of two to one. With every parent, possessing natural affections, to whose heart his offsprings' welfare is dearer than his own, this view of the question will have great weight. Let it be remembered, at the same time, that if there is no opening for the younger members of the agricultural body in the towns, they will be forced back upon the soil, either to be supported out of the labour of others, or to bid against their neighbours for farms, and to raise rents and diminish profits. In fact, nothing can be more clear than that the trade of farming cannot long survive the rain of manufactures and commerce.

I sometimes wonder that my brother farmers have never asked themselves this question—"Have we, as a class of capitalists, been more prosperous than other classes of traders?" Take for instance the grocers, linen drapers, or innkeepers, of your neighbouring market towns. Take the average of those engaged in any of these trades with a capital of say £2,000; then take the average of farmers, similarly circumstanced, and I ask you, which party, at the end of a dozen years, upon an average, has realized the most money? I know your answer will be in favour of the grocers, drapers, and innkeepers. How is this to be reconciled with the notion we have been taught to entertain by the landowners, that the farmers are especially protected? There have been no laws passed under the pretence of giving protection to drapers, grocers, or innkeepers; there are not