The Press. — London, England, 1856-12-20 00:00:00

DECEMBER 20, 1856. gorxtsponentr. AGRICULTURAL STATISTICS. TO THE EDITOR OF "THE PRESS." Sir,—After so many persons have expressed their opinion in public upon the best way of obtaining agricultural statistics, you will perhaps allow me to give publicity to mine through the medium of your respected paper—THE PRESS. I state then at once as my belief that no agricultural statistics, as full as those from Scotland, will ever voluntarily he obtained from the farmers of England. My belief is founded upon the fact that no means exist, or probably ever will exist, in England, as in Scotland, to induce farmers to make a voluntary return of their annual produce. The mean in Scotland is simply the Highland and Agricultural Society, as it is consti tuted. That society possesses the confidence of the entire agricultural community of Scotland, and it has assiduously earned that confidence by a long course of painstaking, impartial, unobtrusive, and economical administration of its peculiar affairs. It counts, in round numbers, three thousand members out of a population of only three millions, and it conn-cts itself intimately, by means of various premiums, with every local agricultural association in Scotland, and, by consequence, with every indi vidual member of those associations. Its influence thus extends over the whole country, so that not a person in town or country has a word to say against it, but, on the contrary, every one is ready to eulogise its management; and, considering the multifarious. ness of its transactions, it is really surprising how few errors it has committed in a long lifetime. The means used by the society for obtaining returns from the farmers are the following—not that the directors, as a body, have had any share in concoct ing those means, they wisely having left that to he done by their energetic secretary. The country is divided into districts, over each of which is appointed an intelligent farmer residing within it, as the enumerator. Each district comprehends a number of parishes, seven or eight, to each of which is ap pointed a skilful resident farmer, accustomed to value agricultural produce, as a valuator. The secretary issues schedules of particulars to each enumerator of a district, who, in his turn, distributes them to the valuators of his parishes, and the valuators hand them to the farmers of their respec tive parishes, with the request that the particulars be filled in and the schedules returned, sealed up in an envelope, to the valuators, within a specified time, who then return them to the enumerator, and he transmits them without delay to the secretary. The secretary has a staff of clerks who embody the contents of the schedules into the tables of the report. It will be observed that neither the local valuators nor the enumerator can know the contents of the schedules, which are alone seen by the secre tary and his clerks, and who, having no personal ac • quaiutance with farmers or their farms, have no motive in divulging a single return, but who, on the contrary, immediately destroy the schedules as they have been used. Should any farmer refuse or neglect to make a return, the valuator of the parish, with the assistance of the neighbouring farmers of this foolish recusant, fill in the particulars, and their practised eyes cannot err much beyond those of the farmer himself. But, in truth, not above three in forty thousand have refused to make returns, though some may neglect to do so. A simpler and more efficient plan than this can scarcely be con ceived for obtaining the information desired, and the plan is worked out by those best acquainted with the particulars desiderated. Now, no such plan, simple as it is, can be adopted in England. The English Agricul tural Society declined to have anything to do with agricultural statistics, deeming them a branch of genef;al politics ; and if it had undertaken the task, I question it would have had the confidence of the farmers of England in it. For that society only counts five thousand members out of a population of eighteen millions, and it has, besides, no connec tion whatever with the numetous local agricultural associations dispersed over the country. The Eng lish farmers thus have no medium by which they cau make a voluntary return of their annual produce, as the farmers of Scotland have. It is therefore not surprising that they refuse to make returns which will be inspected by such a desultory body as a Poor- Law Board, or by the official routine of the Board of 'Trade, who has often given the cold shonlder to farmers. The Poor-Law Board might indeed re ceive sealed : returns from the farmers and transmit them to the Board of Trade, but the latter has not the confidence of the farmers, and it might, through inadvertence, allow the returns to appear before the Public as some income-tax returns have lately made their appearance—in the snuff-shops. What then • - remains to be done, if returns must be had, but to have recourse to compulsion ? Many farmers will yield to compulsion, but many will not ; and the ex• action of a penalty from the latter will be but an THE PRESS. their English brethren are, I have no hesitation in giving it as my opinion—(and I know them well) — that they would have as strenuously opposed a com pulsory measure, and have refused to make returns to bodies in whom they have no confidence, as the English farmers have done. Since, then, a com pulsory measure would prove unsatisfactory in its results, and since no workable plan for obtaining returns seems available, what is to be done to obtain the desired statistics ? My answer to this question is, that the extent of acres placed under crop every year might be obtained from the Commutation- Tithe Commissioners; and they might employ intel ligent farmers, to be paid for their trouble, as valuators, to estimate the amount of the standing crops in districts, in the cases where the farmers refused to make returns, whether voluntary or com pulsory. I would have it optional with the farmers to make returns, but would provide the means of ob taining the information independently of them. When they saw in time that the information could be obtained in spite of them, they would yield, and give it themselves. Commercial dealers in grain at pre• sent employ valuators before harvest in all the most important corn districts. But estimates of crops standing on the ground are mere guesses ; they can not be depended on for their accuracy. Of the crop of 1855, for example, farmers acknowledged to me that they had not received on thrashing their wheat from a fifth to a fourth of the quantity of what they had prior to harvest estimated it at, and others re ceived from three to four bushels more than they had estimated. Such a disparity in the estimates, if made known, would shake the confidence of the public in the gross amounts. An error of a fourth or a fifth in the wheat crop, or of even a bushel or two the acre, would make such a difference in the whole amount of that crop as might amount to millions of quarters. This is so serious a consideration as to afford a feasible ground for the inquiry, whether it is worth while spending time and money in making mere guesses of our annual produce. As things are, creditable as the Scotch returns seem to be, they are as yet far from perfect. They leave the large extent of ground occupied by cotters unestimaed, as well as gentlemen's parks and gardens, and the gardens of cottagers ; and the immense range besides of mountain pastures can only be estimated after the completion of the Ordnance survey. By and by all these particulars will no doubt be included in the returns. Were the Tithe Commissioners to do as much as I have suggested, they would still leave untold the numbers of live stock of all descriptions existing in England ; and I do not see bow these can be estimated without the assistance, or at least the assent, of the farmers themselves. I fear, then, the conclusion I must arrive at is, that no returns, reliable at all, of the crop and stock of England every year, can be obtained without the direct assent of the farmers ; and I doubt that their assistance will ever be secured. but by compulsion. I think the farmers of England have been unfairly badgered for their unwillingness hitherto evinced to return their produce, merely to please the party who are demand ing it; for in truth farmers have no interest in such returns beyond the gratification of the information they would afford to every one. As far as farmers are concerned, they must thrash out corn as fast as their stock want it., and no faster ; for straw in stack soon becomes useless as fodder for stock, and it dete riorates in value for manure. Granaries in steadings are no more capacious than will contain horse corn and seed corn. Before farmers, then, could take adsantage of the probable effect upon prices which the estimated amount of their crops at harvest might be supposed to indicate in their range during the ensuing season, they would either have to thrash out the corn immediately to the injury of the straw and of the live stock, or to keep it in stack to the starvation of the stock, or to lease granaries in town to the injury of the corn, until the prices should suit their speculative views. In short, they would have to become speculators in corn before such returns could do them any practical good ; so that it would be better for them to remain as they are, only growers of corn. They would have to follow a course of con duct directly at variance with their experience hitherto, which has been to take the prices of grain and stock as they occur in the market, as their wisest policy in the course of a lease. I grant that the information demanded from the farmers would greatly benefit the speculators in corn of home growth, and, still more, speculators in foreign corn, — the latter of whom being then forewarned would be come forearmed to compete with the farmers of Eng land in their own markets, to the promotion of their own interests. I know foreign corn-dealers and foreign growers of corn who take this view of the question of agricultural statistics which is at present agitating the agricultural community. ELECTORAL INEQUALITIES. Letter VII: TO THE EDITOR OF THE PRES 9. 1205 (about 500,000 men in all) ought to have votes in returning members to Parliament ; (2) fifty-six rotten burghs ought to be disfranchised ; and (3) these franchises ought to be given to populous places, either unrepresented or inadequately repre sented. The Tories demurred; they asserted that the nation had prospered under the existing consti tution, which was the admiration and envy of the rest of Europe ; that close burghs were useful as permitting the introduction into Parliament of young men of talent, who had no funds to stand the expense of a popular election ; and that, though under tl , e existing system all places were not represented, all interests were, which would be reversed, and not to the better, under the new system, which professed to represent all places, but only the interests of A B C D, &c., and the class to which they belonged, viz., the ten-pound householders. The Whigs agitated the country, appealed to revolutionary passions, and strengthened their argument by frightening their adversaries. The result was that the principle of the Reform was carried, and Parliament proceeded to discuss the branches of which it consisted. After some controversy, A B C D E F, our 500,000 men, were constituted the electoral body, but the serious fight took place on the other two branches of the bill. We are not sure whether it wAs by design, but the discussion could not have been managed more adroitly for the Whigs. The contest of parties broke into detailed skirmishes. Thera were dirisions on nearly every burgh which it was proposed to en franchise, and the general result of the battle was lost sight of by the Tories from the very inveteracy with which they fought in these isolated and now nearly forgotten combats. So completely was this the case that, when at last the Whigs gained the victory, and forced their " whole bill" down the throatsof the king and the peers, the final bearing of the measure was not seen. This probably arose from the fact that, as in all other great successes, a powerful reaction set in, and the Whigs committing two or three acts of insanity, the Tories, under Sir Robert Peel, for a brief time re gained the ascendancy. They kept it till the reaction waned in its turn, an i allowed the real effect of the Reform Bill to dis close itself. Thereafter the contest was hopeless, and the desperate attempt of Sir Robert Peel to per petuate the Tory party by changing its policy only hastened by a very little the logical result of the changes which bad been introduced into the consti tution. At last our eyes are open, and what do we see ? The 500,000 A B C D E F have got their votes, but A B C return twice as many members as D E F, and it has happened by a most extraordinary chance that the favoured parties are those who, by position and interest, support the party to which the Re formers belonged; so that the grand patriotic mea sure on which the Whigs had been declaiming for a century, and which was to give everyone everything, turned out after all to be simply an ingenious scheme to secure to themselves a perpetuity of the loaves and fishes. Perhaps the Whigs will put in a defence that they did not intend this result, that their object was to give equal justice, to rescue political power from monopolists, and give it to the people, and that what has really happened, namely, putting the power into the hands of the shopkeepers, was a mistake ; and as it appears that the Tories did not apprehend that the parturient mountain would have brought forth this most mischievous weasel, we are inclined to save the honesty of the majority of the Reformers at the ex pense of their sharpness. We verily believe Lord John Russell did not intend to trick the nation, and we are confident that Earl Grey, if alive, would re pudiate his political child, seeing what a scamp he has turned out. But if the Whigs take this defence, "it is never too late to mend." If they have been, through ignorance, accessory to a swindle, let ,them make reparation. As to the Conservatives, they do not deserve to have justice done them if they do not exert them selves to obtain it. The cart-wheel to be sure is very deep in the mud, but there is no use crying on Jupiter, and still less in expecting assistance from thrse fellows who are standing round laughing at our embarrassment, and who, to tell the truth, made the rut we have tumbled into. Lit us put our shoulders to it with a will, like honest, earnest men, and the bystanders will repent of their wicked joke and lend us their assistance. Dropping metaphor, let the leader of the Conser vative party demand from Parliament, soon after its assembly, leave to bring in a bill to effect an equi table distribution betwixt the counties and the towns of the representation. A practical measure on such a principle has a good chance to be carried even by the present Parliament, but if not it will be the best possible measure on which to go to the country at the general election. It will be a good and an honest cry, because it is simply - for justice.—l sir, Sc., rurtn — L7 . wilinot j ; - a — nd - the ex. I "' ‘ j I I ' llll I ' " "NC %) la general election. Meld to compulsion , Letter VII, action of a penalty from the latter will be but an It will be a good and an honest cry, because it is inadequate compensation to the public for the want TO THE EDITOR OF THE PRE99. simply a cry for justice.—l am, sir, S:c., of the information withheld by them. If the Scottish Sir,—The Reform Bill was managed in this J. A. G. farmers had been placed in the same predicament as wise. The Whigs said (I) ABCDE F, &c., • Jima.