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 .wilinotj; -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.