The Express.
London, England, 1853-01-18 00:00:00

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LONDON, TUESDAY, JANUAT:Y 18.

WI. should be very glad to know—and tens of
thousands of people in England would be glad to
know—what has been the actual effect of the rains of
the last five months on the agriculture of our islands.
There is no doubt of great mischief having been
done ; but we want to know how much. As often
as we a.-Ir an opinion we get a different answer. We
doubt whether anybody knows, within very wide
limits, how much autumn sowing was prevented by
the rains. Some say a third ; some say half ; some
say two-thirds. That the autumn sowing should have
been hindered is a serious matter ; but it is a more
serious matter that we can learn nothing about it that
can be relied on. It is not so in safaris of trade
and manufacture. There we have to contend with
no more uncertainty than belongs to everything
future. The existing facts are always accessible.
But, in regard to agriculture, the state of which is
at any given time more important, we arc always
groping in vain after the facts. We cannot go on in
this way. It is too hazardous to us all; and it is
too hard upon the farmers, who have a right te
every facility that can be afforded them for the wise
and prosperous management of their affairs. The
best thing that a new Home Secretary could do lift
his own fame, and for the interests of the kingdom,
would be to establish a plan for obtaining a complete
periodical return of agricultural statistics.
While the agitation for the repeal of the (kris
Laws was going on, a few agents went about the
country reporting, as everybody will remember, on
the state of tillage here and there. The state of
tillage was usually very bad, and tho reports were
therefore not very agreeable to agricultural readers;
but yet they were devoured with avidity. Such
accounts as the e Whistler " gave of the farms that
lay along either side of so many
.miles of road—of
the crops iu the fields, the waste in the hedges and
ditches, the abuses in the farm-yards, the state of
the cottages, the wages of the labourers, their num-
bers, habits, &c., were useful in their day, and
within a certain range, and were extremely interest-
ing to a multitude of readers. Thus it was with
even this meagre sample of agricultural
reporting. Sir ROBERT PEEL knew this; and
be saw the necessity of enabling the farmers
to meet the great impending change in their
affairs by giving them the means of always knowing
their own position in regard to the markets, and the
needs of the whole population. He said that returns
of agricultural statistics would be absolutely neces-
sary to the farmers. Many people have said so
since; but the farmers have not got them yet. The
man who gives them this boon will have more right
to go down to posterity as the farmer's friend than
Gleoaox 111., or all investors of all scales of corn
duties ; as much right, perhaps, as those who set
agricultural production free. We really seem able,
through Sir Mr rimer FITZUF.RDERT, the first agri-
cultural reporter, to give a more comprehensive
account of the state of rural affairs three cen-
turies and a quarter ago than we could undertake
to do now. To be sure, there was not so very
much beyond sheep and wool to be reported
of in those days; but the accounts were thorough
as far as they went ; and we obtain a pretty clear
view of woodland and pasture, of the yeomen with
their hardworking wives and children, and of the
labourers in their windy cottages. We learn a good
deal about the quantity of meat salted down for win-
ter food, and of the large proportion of sheep that
perished every winter, for want of means to keep
them alive. It would be a difficult matter for a
writer of our day. to give anything like so clear an
idea of the condition of any district in England as
Sir ANTHONY FITZHEIBERT gives of the whole. We
know, or can know, everything about new methods
of tillage, new manures, impeoved implements, stock,
Ac.; but there is no possibility of ascertaining
amounts and proportions, in any direction whatever.
Here is our England, naturally divided into three
stripe—the mineral district occupying the west, from
the Land's End up into Scotland—the pastoral dis-
trict stretching along the middle, from the Doesetshire
downs to the Yorkshire fells; and the great agricul-
tural portion which occupies the east of the island.
Now, is there a man in England who can give any
information as to the amount of food got out of the
surface of the mineral district, or the quantity of
cattle and sheep that graze the middle range ; or the
production of any one kind of grain, root, or stock,
in any one of the eastern counties ? By the census
we learn what proportion the agricultural population
tears to the rest; and by careful computation it has
been ascertained to what amount that population
has decreased in proportion to the manufacturing
and commercial ; but we know nothing certain of the
rates of wages, amount of capability, and modes of
living of that put of our popWion in any district of
tlielnngdoen. Who can tell how much oak we are grow-
ing, or what our collective woodlands are? How are
we to learn the breadth of our wheat lands, and the
proportion of barley, oats, and roots ? How can the
farmer know whether he should give his attention
most to groin or stock, unless he has more et leas idea
what other people are growing ? We are now re-
solving fresh warnings about the failure of wool in
Australia. Is there a man in Leicestershire, or out
al it, who has any facts to tell about the number at
sheep in our Islands—err whether it is on the increase
or the contrary P We have a wonderful amount of
information every season about the probable yield of
American cotton : but there is none to be had about
the wool that is growing on our own sheepwalks.
Here is an increasing demand for milk by railway to
supply our large towns, and for butter by sea, to
New York and further. How can the farmer know
how to speculate in this direction, unless he could
learn something of what other people are doing ?
By watching the shipping, we can find out what
cattle, eggs, vegetables, &c. are imported, as well as
worn; but once landed, there is no learning any-
thing more about them ; and the different orders of
rural speculators must be miming many a fine oppor-
tunity of rupplying one another's wants. If the
word speculation is objected to, and old fashioned
men tell us that speculation is ruin, and that
all they want is to go on in the old ways, as their
fathers did before them, we must just observe that,
is the present day, no speculation is so dangerous as
that of going on producing in the dark. No manu-
facturer does so, except to maintain his operatives
during a short period in troubled time. No one
but the farmer ever thinks of producing the same
quantity .of the same commodity every year
without inquiring how the market is likely to be
stocked, and what will be the probable demand.
The farmer may plead that food will always be
wanted; and this is true; but the question which
will make all the difference in his welfare is—what
sort of food, grain or meat, roots or dairy produce ?
Really, all this seems so plain that one is ashamed
to write the fact recurs that we have no re-
turns of agricultural statistics. As long as our Govern-
ment never knows whether we have corn enough in
the country for us to live on till harvest ; as long as
ten thousand farmers may be all at once, and un-
known to each other, growing more wool and less
corn, or more corn and less wool; as long as cattle
and horses eat grain instead of roots and hay be-
cause the owner does not know in time that oats are
likely to be scarce and turnips and mangold abun-
dant, we need not be ashamed of setting down in
full what it is clear people do not know in well as
they ought.
We have watched, with a doleful sort of amuse-
ntent,the pains taken by individualsouid commonly in
vain, to anaemia the proportions of labourers to an
acre or other area, in different parts of the kingdom.
One might almost as well ask how many birds roost
in the hedges. It is a rare thing to get the same an-
swer twice in one week. In one place a resident is
convinced that there will soon be little grass land
left anywhere, because a few of his neighbours have
taken a fit of stall-feeding their cattle, and are
ploughing up their pastures to grow roots; and in
the next county 'you may find a panic about grail,
because half-a-dozen farmers are turning back their
fields into pasture, and, trying experiments in irri-