The Express.
London, England, 1848-01-10 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, MONDAY EVENING, JANUARY 10, 1848.

Xr. Oopit, bi wile, act dila They lien sees Idampi
Ira dm mem et rvMMs la which they bed leek heeled,
mil epee We. empeeed to the fresh air chewed due et awl-
maim, bat a efilliem were dreadfully islets'. Ilifithsasi
lathe MOM IMP els *umber recently Wilt, sad was epees"
ea latisiresg week. At the thus of the leeiss time wee
upwards of five bushels at bread in it, whisk Mr. Ceps. and
Ur wife was placing nay to take out, he& big behind
the erreater, sad the hid In the emus Oahe drip; it was
breed awl" rein there wee tbeeetere se waesmity be the
gee, mad the ebeemelWese mime dle seeaneass seemore
emmeediaary, town& es it was • gas explodes, and of a
vast body, to judge friseathe damage done. The entire floor-
ing, under which there is ao cellar, was blown up, some of
the hoards forcing their way partly into the first-floor;
several joins of this floor were snapped in two, and the
bonds forced tip. Both shop windows were blown oat, the
two heavy folding•doors torn from the jamb posts, and the
destruttion continued to the bakehouse, a distance of eighteen
yards from the shop. The opposite house had all the win-
dows broken, and the damage altogether will awing to
Mira hundred 'pounds. The es was only laid on from
the IN. es Ikeda, last, and various opinions are afloat es
to the sliskiasy of the work; the matter will, however, be
investigated by the company (a local one). On Saturday
Mrs. Cupit was declared out of danger.
NUMEROUS FIRES ON SATURDAY.—During Satur-
day last seven fires occurred in the metropolitan district.
Between nine and tan o'clock a number of children, who
had been left in a room at No. 29, Marlborough-street, St.
James's, were playing with some hinters, which becoming
ignited the flames spndily communicated with the bed and
furniture, and the children became surrounded with flames,
but by prompt assistance they were all rescued.—Shortly
before midnight a fire occurred at No. 9, Princes-court,
Princes-street, London-road, in the occupation of Mr. C.
Dram. It was caused from a spark flying out of the fire,
which set a quantity of wearing apparel in a blase. Owing
to the timely discovery the inmates escaped, and the fire was
speedily exunguished.—finother outbreak occurred at No.
91, Fetter-lane, in the tenure of Mr. G. Lake. The heat of
the furnace attached to Fetter-lane chapel was the cause of
the fire. The damage done was inewsiderable.—A fourth
fire broke out at No. 337, St. Mary-axe, the property of Mr.
Cohen, diamond merchant. The cause was similar to the
Int : the heat of the furnace connected with the adjoining
baths fired the bond timbers in the back counting-house.
—Another fire, supposed to be the work of an incendiary,
broke out upon the premises occupied by Mr. P. Mills, a
cabinet-maker, No. 41, Tottenham-court-road. When dis-
covered the contents of the workshops on the ground floor
and the workshop on the story above were on fire; and the
flames were not extinguished until considerable damage wee
done.—The other fires were not of serious importance.
INQUEST, SATURDAT.—A CHILD SUFFOCATED IN
Ban.—Before Mr. Baker, at the Goldsmiths' Arms, Gold-
smiths'-row, Hackney-road, on view of the body of Williams
Herbert, aged six Nneks. The deceased, on Tuesday night,
was placed in bed by his parents, in good health. the next
morning, about seven o'clock. upon his mother waking, she
found her baby without any signs of life. He was put into
a warm bath, and Mr. Chambers, a surgeon, sent for, who
was unable to restore the vital functions. That gentleman
stated, from observing marks on the :eft side of the cody, and
the general appearance of the deceased, that death must
have been the effects of suffocation. Verdict, "That the
deceased was accidentally suffocated."

LARGE AND SMALL FARMS.
Such is the title of an essay, composed by Hypolite
Pussy, the ex-minister, for the Institute of France, and which
is now most seasonably translated and published in England.
.the author begins by attributing to Arthur Young the pre-
ference of large tarots in England, fur which the reasons are
toe well known to need repetition. Mr. Palsy say,:
" But if well vouched for facts seized on the popular con-
viction in England, in other countries facts of equal authen-
ticity led to conclusions altogether opposite. Belgium, for
example, had two V3llllls of arable country completely differ-
ent from each other. In the Walloon district the system of
Large farms prevailed ; and, notaitheanding the natural
?Witness of the soil, the retsina from such terms was small.
The district lying betwixt Ghent and Antwerp—the country
of Wale and Termonde—wan, on the contrary, ;entirely co-
vered with small farms, and there, lands originally sterile,
had become of an admirable fertility. Nowhere was the
land let at so high a rate, was so much live stock reared, or
was there found a more dense population in the enjoyment
of so much comfort. At the sight of so striking a contrast
it was perfectly natural fur Belgian agricultural writers to
hesitate in &warthog the preference to large farms; indeed,
some of them went so far Ills to denounce them as nuissame
of which the country should be cleared ; and, in 1780, the
States of Ilainault actually passed a law for their suppression.
Nor did Italy end Spain any more furnish adherents to the
doctrines of Young. This was because, in both three coun-
tries, small farms possessed a proved superiority over all
others, In Italy, whilst the large farms of the Roman States
are found to be tke receptacles of poverty and sloth, the
terms of Lombardy, not measuring more than twenty-five
hectares, and the metairies of Tuscany, that in general do
not exceed three or four, are the seats of the most prosperous
activity. In Spain there is nothing that cso be compared to
the small possessions of the kingdom of Valencia and Lower
Catalonia, a decisive fact that left no doubt on the part of
the natives as to which system the preference ought to be
awarded.
" Finally, a cumber of eclectic' sprang up, who pro-
*minced great and small farms to be equally eligible, and,
reserving their blame for those of middle sire, stamped the
latter with reprobation. These last, it was said, possessed
name of the adrenteeres of the other two; they were too
large to admit of the minute attentions which give value to
small locations ; they were too small to allow of the distribu-
tion and the economy of labour that insure high profits to
large ones; neither the spade aor the plough husbandry
could be profitably practised on farms whoa limited extefit
would not employ • team. Nevertheless, in several parts of
Europe were to be found middle sized farms in a very
thriving condition ; but, in the heat of controversy, this fact
was overlooked by all parties; and, in spite of the Essay of
Shaw on Belgian farming, It was only in 1802 that Dr. John
Ball of Etinburgh, in his work on the scarcity, produced a
certain impression, by recalling attention to the fact, that
In Flanders there were farms from fifteen to thirty hectares
In the most thriving state, and that there forty hectares
were looked upon as too much for one person to manage, so
as to draw from the soil the greatest possible profit. The
French revolution came to complicate the controversy, and
to render it at onoe more animated and less professional."
The controversy between large, small, and middling
fermis, of course awoke when France was to be re-organised
by the Bourbons in 1816. The English school of large
farms and large estates perorated and argued, but could
make but little impression against the equable division of
i property made by the Code Napoleon.
It was only in 1828 that a law was presented to establish
entails and prim"geniture. It was rejected, and 1830 soon
came to rout for ever all projects of the kind.
M. Paasy gives a sketch of the division of agricultural
holding in Germany :
" Germany remained for a long time a stranger to the
discussions of which, in England and France, the size of
farms and the modes of cultare were the subjects. They
were only taken up for a moment by the Germans, when
Frederick IL distributed the lands in his grand Bsilwicks
among 36,000 families, drawn from all the neighbouring
states. This measure was disapproved of by Prussian finan-
ciers, who affirmed that the new settlers could not prosper
on their petty holdings, and that the king would thereby
lose a part of the revenues formerly drawn from the
bailwicks. As remarked by Count Hertzberg, it
was transporting, for debate at Berlin, the theories put for-
ward by Arthur Young. Frederick paid no attention to
gash strictures, and the controversy died away of itself. In
Germany, moreover, everything concurred to favour the
breaking down of estates into small portions.
" The end which, at that period, the governments of the
north. both German and Scandinavian, had in view, was to
promo for the inhabitants of the rural districts the advan-
ftes accruing from proprietorship; and, for the attainment
el that object, many states did not hesitate to make great
sacrifices. Hence arose the system of perpetual loam,
which the great Frederick applied to the lands detached from
hie grand Bailwicks, in order to consign them to families
that cultivated them themselves; hence, also, came the ran-
soms by means of which Maria Theresa and Joseph 11. ren-
dered hereditary in the persons of the cultivators the recite
due b the peasantry to the owners, from whom they held
their lands in perpetual usufruct, and which measures they
also attempted to introduce into Hungary. In our
own times a similar policy has marked all the plans intended
for the abolition of predial servitude in the various states
where it prevailed. Betwixt the seigneurs and their pea-
sants—some tenanting on account of the landlords a
rnetairie, but removable at will, others, real slaves attached
to the sail, working under a steward or bailiff—have been
effected, in sizes and under conditions varying according to
local circumstances, subdivisions of the soil. And the newly
emancipated occupants, in return for the lands acquired by
them in absolute property, have merely to pay definite sums,
or perform certain fixed services, annually. In fact, this
bestowal of land on the poor cultivators has established farm-
ing on a small scale on all the points where these grants have
been made ; lout no material objection has yet been taken to
such grants; and it is without any predilection for the
system which they create that the changes have taken plus,
M which the progress of society every day discloses the ad-
vantages. At the present day a circumstance has been
printed out in the north of Europe, which has sxrdted same
umoselnees, namely—the breaking down and dislocation of
small properties held by the peasantry, and the consequent
want of uniformity in the cultivation.
" Accordingly, several governments thought it advieable
to edicts for the purpose of facilitating the reunion of
the scattered parts of domains, and for preventing their dis-
junction. A project of a law, proposed by the Prussian go-
vernment for the Rhenish provinces, indicates the views
which are prevalent in Germany on this matter. This pro-
ject, which the Diet rejected, required that for every species
of farm there should be assigned a minimum extent of
ground, below which ne parcel should in future be reduced.
In this case, it will be seen there was no question about a
system of great or small farms; the proposed law solely re-
garded a special inconvenience, for which a remedy was
sought, and which in Germany at the present time menu,
perhaps, more attention than anywhere else."
Mr. Pasty seems to thinks that the nature of the soil has
most influence in deciding whether farms should be large or
small.
" There are many sons, for example, which are neither
suitable for farms of a small or middle size. These farms
only thrive by raising delicate and high-priced articles
with corn; they require a soil which can grow every
variety of plants, and which can be easily adapted to
the rearing of those that are most costly. The latter are
not suited to tenacious soils, which prevent their long and
spiral roots from penetrating deep into the earth. All
kinds of land, on the contrary, where corn crops succeed, are
suitable for large farms. On these are raised no vegetables
that require much manual labour; all the crops consist of