Transfer of Farming Capitals.

THE readers of the multiplied publications on the Corn Bill must

recollect, that many of their authors have spoken on a systematic application of Agricultural Capitals, as if the best lands in a country were sure first to be cultivated, and in case of capitals being withdrawn, that such effect would take place in proportion to the poverty of the soil; and so many theoretical remarks have been made on the subject, which I take to be perfectly vague, that it seems necessary to offer a few observations.

The writers who speak of the progressive application of capital to land, are not very distinct in their expressions; and one view in which their observations may be understood is, the supposition of an original possession and gradual cultivation of a country, as if a formal selection took place of the soils, in proportion to their fertility. When such an idea is applied to a supposed fact, it be comes extremely indistinct, and is liable to many errors. If we apply such a supposition to the country we live in, we cannot guess either at the period or the soil: we have but one guide to direct us, and that is the universality of the open-field system, of fallow, wheat, spring corn, being found all over Europe, after the division of the Roman Empire. That soil must have been esteemed fertile, which would give a crop of wheat by means of a fallow; and the distribution of the country from Russia to England, and from the Baltic to the Mediterranean, was a village of farmers and laborers clustered around a church, and surrounded by three open fields, for the fallow, the wheat, and the spring corn: I have seen in Northamptonshire, upon strong wet land, the exact counterpart of a French parish. But in those early ages they knew nothing of the value of sand land, and left every species of chalk in a state of waste; and if the writers I am alluding to are of opinion, that such original investment of capital was attended by a greater proportional production than took place when turnips were introduced on sand and on chalky loams, and sainfoin became another production of chalk, I must be of opinion that the error is not a slight oue; nor shall I be far from the truth in asserting, that in those early ages they did not know the best land from the worst. The application of capital upon sands which they left under rabbits, and upon dry loams on chalk, which they left under sheep, has been attended by a far greater proportional production than attended their exertions by fallowing clays; and there are in this king

dom large tracts of sand and deep loam on chalk, which let at a much higher rent than any stiff clays produce, even with the assistance of the much-admired fallows; and high rents are not to be paid for lands which are not highly productive. For these reasons I must be inclined to think, that the writers who have delivered formal disquisitions on any supposed diminution of produce, as husbandry advanced towards perfection, have at least been deficient in those explanations which were necessary for a right understanding of their assertions.

On the supposition that I am right in these observations, what is the conclusion to be drawn from the vibrations of capitalwhichare now to be apprehended? It is admitted in all quarters, that capital must be withdrawn from what is called poor soils: but this expression has been used with a want of attention, in some publications where I should not have expected such a deficiency of discrimination. If by poor lands, is meant that on which modern improvements have been the most remarkable, viz. sands under the turnip culture, and which are in many cases cultivated very profitably without the introduction of wheat, and where that grain appears recurring rarely, I must be free to declare, that the ob servation seems to be erroneous, and that strong clays, fallowed at a considerable expense for wheat, are much more likely to be given up the reason is sufficiently plain; all such soils in the occupation of weak and poor farmers, will scarcely, under the present prices, pay any rent at all; and what can they be expected to do, when the farmer is necessitated to save every shilling that is possible in their cultivation ?

But it has been asked in various publications, whether the distress of a single year is to overturn an agriculture which has been so commended? One writer attributes the evil to small farms being thrown into large ones. And Mr. Hume, of the Custom-house, seems to think the modern improvements in agriculture so many impertinencies, and recommends the going back to the good old custom of two crops and a fallow; a husbandry so general in open fields, that it might be presumed that the reversing all modern enclosures would form a part of such advice. Such observations may excite a smile, but are far from meriting any formal reply. But another writer, the Fellow of a College at Oxford,3 has with much solemnity deduced nearly the same conclusion from a string of theoretical problems, all tending to show, that the application of capital in all modern improvements, is attended by a less

2

The Question fairly stated, by Thomas Broughton, Esq. p. 28.

Thoughts on the Corn Laws, p. 68.

Essay on the application of Capital to Land, &c.

proportional production. To establish any such assertion, will demand examinations sufficiently remote from all theory. That the position is utterly erroneous, I have the most perfect conviction; and it would demand only time and space in these papers, to insert innumerable cases to produce the direct reverse of this doctrine. There is no investment of agricultural capital, proportionally, so beneficial in direct production, as the transfer of several small ill-cultivated farms, into the occupation of a man whose capital enables him to introduce the improvements these writers are so ready to deprecate. Small scraps of enclosures, in which half the time of the teams is lost in turning, in which a fifth or a sixth of the surface is lost in hedges, ditches, and borders, are thrown into square or oblong fields adapted to the most profitable employment of the teams, and the sun and wind permitted to sweep the surface; for drying wet soils, for ripening the corn, lessening the effect of mildews, and accelerating every operation of harvest; digging effective hollow-drains; manuring with clay, marl, and chalk or lime; the extended cultivation of turnips, because the capital is ready for the purchase of live stock to consume them; these, and an hundred other instances which might be named, and which tend to the banishment of those favorite fallows, while every field improves in freedom from weeds, form investments of capital, attended by a far greater proportional production of corn, than such capitals as had been previously employed on the same lands. I will not refer you to farmers for this information, though certainly they are most able to give it; but mount your horses, ride into the country, open your eyes, and if prejudice has not been beforehand in preventing their use, you will soon be convinced of the errors drawn from political theories.

But another writer has since appeared, far more violent than all the rest against the landed interest, and most especially against every species of agricultural improvement: this is Mr. Ricardo.TM Whatever may be his intention, far be it from me to consider him as an enemy; for I must hail the appearance of his work as decisively beneficial to the landed interest: he throws aside the mask of general benefits, and lays all landed men in the dust: he pronounces all improvements as mischievous, and desires that the national dependence for food should be on cheap foreign corn. Here the object of the commercial class is openly avowed, and the Legislature should mark well the aim avowed by these gentlemen; but let this best friend to the landed interest speak for himself.

Essay on the Profits of Stock, 1815.

"If we were left to ourselves, unfettered by legislative enactments, we should gradually withdraw our capital from the cultivation of poor lands, and import the produce which is at present raised upon them; and the public would gain many times the amount of what the farmers would lose, by the exchange of the capital to manufactures."-Ricardo's Essay on the Profit of Stock, &c. p. 37.-Throughout this performance, every idea of agricul tural improvements, when contrasted with the import of cheap corn, is utterly deprecated, and he adds, "To be consistent, let us by the same act arrest improvement, and prohibit importation." -Ib. p. 50.

There is scarcely a page in the work, in which foreign corn is not uniformly called cheap corn; wheat at a low price. But what trifling is this, when speaking to a country that has imported immense quantities at a price enormously high; nay, that has paid immense bounties for the import of this high priced corn! in 1796, to the amount of 573,4187., and in 1801, to that of 1,420,3551. What became of our dependence on cheap foreign corn in 1812, when, as Mr. Malthus rightly observes, "with the price of corn at six guineas a quarter, we could only import a little more than 100,000 quarters ?"-Malthus's Grounds of an Opinion, p. 6.

Whenever great difficulties in the farming world occur from low prices, threatening to drive capitals into other employments, I must conceive that such an effect will bear a relation much more to the state of the farmer, than to any particular soil: men with poor weak capitals, whose cultivation at present is very imperfect, must first go to the wall; and were I to name any soils least likely to be abandoned, I should without hesitation instance what are usually reckoned poor soils; that is, the great tracts apon which the best and most effective of modern improvements have taken place in other words, those on which capitals were, in point of time, the last invested: which is directly contrary to the suppositions of those many writers, who have treated on the progressive investment of capital to land.

For these and other reasons, the question of all low prices, whenever they may occur, concerns our capital farmers in a very inferior degree, as they are able to bear one or two unfavorable years, when there is any prospect of a successive recompense; but the greater part of the kingdom is probably in the hands of a very different order of men, that is, of small, weak, and poor farmers, who are really unable to stand the heavy loss of one such year as the present. The whole race of these men must either give up their employments, or struggle through their diffi

culties by saving every shilling that is possible, and consequently deteriorating their insufficient cultivation, by carrying such savings to a ruinous extreme. Whenever a great number of our farmers shall be found in a distressed situation, it must greatly lessen their competition in the markets with their capital brethren, who must infallibly, in such a state of things, be most amply repaid for all their preceding losses, by the enormous prices to which corn would be sure to rise.

This circumstance reminds me of a conversation I had at Houghton many years ago, in the company of George, Earl of Orford. Some gentlemen were complimenting me on the benefit of my Tours to the agriculture of the kingdom, by explaining the principles of Norfolk and Suffolk husbandry, for their application to other counties. Lord Orford said, "We, as Norfolk and Suffolk men, are not obliged to Mr. Young for doing so; if other counties be improved, they will bring much more corn to market, and this will be no benefit to our district: if they choose to be barbarians, producing not a third of the corn they might do, let them go on, but surely we do not want to teach them to be rivals, by lessening the prices we receive." Were our great farmers disposed to think as his Lordship did, they would be apt to thank the opposers of the Corn Bill, as much as the public at large ought to be thankful to Government and the Landed Interest in Parliament, for taking under their protection every class in the State:

&

BANK RESTRICTION.

THIS is a subject which would not have found a place in these papers, if I could well have avoided it but in considering the prices of corn in England during the last 20 or 30 years, and especially through the present century, it was found almost impossible to keep clear of the real, or supposed causes of those prices: the reader will therefore have the candor not to attribute to choice, my engaging in the examination of circumstances which might not be thought to lie in the immediate road of these enquiries but I soon found the necessity of not passing in silence, a subject which has by so many late writers, received so particular an attention, when treating on the price of corn.~