The Express.
London, England, 1851-09-16 00:00:00

THE SOUTH COAST COUNTIES.

TO TIM EDITOR OF THE DAILY NEWS.

Having occasion to visit a district on the South
Coast, I availed myself of the opportunity of inspect-
ing the crops upon the land lying between the me-
tropolis and the sea, and of making some inquiries
as to the state and prospects of the farmers in these
localities. This is certainly not a district in which
improvement is very marked or general. Here and
there you see a farm reasonably well cultivated, but
there is little, if any, of that spirited farming we find so
extensively in the I:astern Counties, Lincolnshire, and
in some parts of our Midland counties.
Near Anerley is a tract of land laid out in squares
and parallelograms, as if meant for building ground,
' which a largo black board announces to be the
"Anorley Estate," purchased by the National Free-
hold Land Society for division amongst its members.
Whether the subscription list is not full, or whether
the estate is only a recent acquisition, I know not,
bat beyond the laying out of roads—or rather the
sites of roads—there were no signs that members had
taken any steps to render their lots available, either
by cultivation or building. Except in the immediate
neighbourhood of populous towns, I do not bee how
the members of such societies can turn their modi-
cums of land to any profitable account, and I confess
I greatly doubt the desirableness of inducing any
considerable number of working men to look to the
cultivation of a patch of ground as the source of any
considerable part of their livelihood. Sooner or later
they will inevitably become potato growers for their own
consumption, and in the same degree in which their
allotments withdraw them from a dependence on the
sale of their labour, will their circumstances become
deteriorated. Beyond a garden attached to his cot-
tage, the occupation of land is a loss rather than a
gam to a labouring man who can obtain regular em-
ployment. I know that many persons support these
societies under the idea that they encourage
the habit of saving amongst labourers, and
so far they may operate usefully; but the
notion that the creation of a peasant proprietary
in England would add to the comfort and lade-
' pendence of the working classes is, I believe, a
complete delusion. Nor do I think that such a
class can ever be permanently established amongst
us, simply because the men themselves will find
the occupation of a small portion of land unpro-
, Stable.

At Croydon, where the chalk formation cmimences,
the wheat crops are pretty good, and nearly the whole
of the wheat fields were cleared from thence to Rei-
gate. The second crop of clover is almost universally
good, according to soil and cultivation. I doubt
whether the farming of this part of the chalk dis-
trict is as yet sufficiently good to place the farmers
at their ease in these times of moderato prices,
though as regards the present season they have
nothing to complain of : they will have the
utmost return their system of cultiTvatihison is hicly
to give in averaged asons. tract hes
wholly in Surrey, the customary valuation
of the county nits like an incubus on the
Surrey farmer. Now, the Surrey valuation, that is,
the sum an incoming tenant has to py to his prede-
oesser, is the heaviest in England. The fall custom
mom that then outgoing tenant is paid for dressings
and half-dreesigs of dung, and lime, and sheep-
folding, he ploughings and fellows, whether naked
or otherwise, including the rent and taxes of the
fellows, half-bllows, and leys ; ho also pays for all
clover and rye graffireced sown with the spring and
ether oorn; the ianderwoods are paid for down to the
shim; and the hay and straw are paid for at a feed-
ing price. The most experienced valuers at, that
much fraud and falsehood amongst farmers is the re-
sult of this system, which takes place principally in

the half-dressings, namely, those manurings from
which only one crop of corn has been taken. •
I am very much disposed to doubt whether the pre-
valence of a system of allowance for what are called
unexhausted improvements is really beneficial to tho
farmer—first, because the incoming valuations
usually lock up an undue proportion of- his capital,
and he is constantly imposed upon, and pays for that
which is of little use to him ; and, secondly, the cus-
tom of making such allowances greatly, tends to pre-
vent the granting of long leases, which form the only
real protection to the farmer's capital and independ-
ence. I have seen something, and heard a great
deal more, of these valuations between outgoing and
incoming tenants, and I have no hesitation in saying
that, as an incoming tenant I would never submit to
a blind engagement to pay a farming valuation with-
out knowing beforehand what amount I had to pay,
and the particulars for which payment was required.
I have again and again known farmers so hampered
by the large sums they have paid for valuations on
entry, that they never could recover, and I am by no
means surprised that the landed proprietors should
be unwilling to establish any new system of tenant
right allowances by legislative enactment. I would
strongly impress on farmers the importance of insist-
ing on long leases before they enter on farms, and lay
out their money, and then they can make all these
incoming and outgoing valuations a subject of con-
tract. In that way, and that way only, will the in-
coming tenant-farmer clearly know what is his
amount, and how much of his capital he will have
left available for working his farm. I frankly say
I do not think the great majority of Surrey farms I
have seen can be either safe or profitable speculations
to their occupiers as at present farmed. Here, how-
ever, improvement is taking place, though not so
rapidly ur extensively as in many other counties.
After Reigate you pass into the Weald district.
About Reigate the soil is sandy ; it is on the green
sand formation, and thereare some fine fields of roots,
and the corn ciops are good. Between that place and
the chalk hills there are also some good meadows, but
after you get to the Weald clay, about three or four
miles front Reigate, the wheat and oats are poor and
thin. Here the crops are much later than on the chalk
stratum above. There arc some good fields of Swedes.
The whole of this tract requires to be drained; aud the
hedges, woods, and timber trees are so wide, close,
and abundant, that I cannot conceive how any ono
can hope to farm successfully without commeucing,
as he would in Canada, by clearing his farm from
brushwood aud timber. here we meet with summer
allows as a part of the regular course of husbandry.
In the neighbourhood of Three Bridges station, there
is a good deal of rough plantation and wood land,
which like all else in this district, betokens a half-and-
half slovenly mode of doing things. Though there is
some new plantation, the character of the whole
is rather that of an unrecloimed woodland tract than
of a regularly made plantation. Betweeni hree Bridges
and Holcomb, the sandstone of the Wealden formation
I appears, and the country is broken into abrupt hills
of moderate elevation. Here, in addition to an over-
wooded country and small fields, the farmer has to
contend with the shaip acclivities over which his
ploughs must work. The wheat crops aro hero
better than on the Wealden clay, and there ate on
some farms moderately good crops of oats. If this
land were cleared and well drained, it would un-
questionably he capable of being rendered very
productive. Passing Ilayward'a-heath, where sand
becomes more predondnant, there the soil is all of the
same character, occupied generally by small farmers,
of little capital and less enterprise. In one place,
near Burgess-hill, I observed a farm which bore ob-
vious signs of the hand of the improver; and there
a verytine field of wheat told whatmight be grown on
this lard if skilfully and generously treated. The stuck
here consists of the red Sussex cattle, with somo
crossed, apparently, with the Alderney breed.
You then pass over a tract of strong land sloping
towards tho foot of the South Down hills, which hero
present a bold escarpment. Shortly after Hassock's-
gate the road dives into the Chalk-hill, and
emerges in the hilly district around Brighton. From
Brighton all along the south coast there is
a tract of as fine corn land us any in England.
Between the laud, the farming, and the crops on
the Wealden side of the South Downs aud other
rich land of the sea coast, nothing can be more
striking; there everything bespeaks narrow means
and small returns for agricultural enterprise; here
all is fertility and abundance, and from all I can
learn the farmers aro well to do. On the Weald
the tenants arc commonly ignorant men, and seem
to have very little notion of the terms of the con-
tracts they make when entering upon their farms.
The payments made on the Weald by incoming
tenants, extend to dressings and half dressings of
dung and lime, to payment for allows and tillage
performed on the allows, as well as the rent and
taxes on the fallow laud. On old clover ley which
has remained over fur a year, the out-goiug tenant has
also an allowance made of a years rent, it
being assumed that he might have ploughed up the
clover after remaining down one year, and taken a
wheat crop from the land. For the equivocal advan-
tage of sowing whentonla:secontgyear's, the Sussexin-
coming farmer has to pay a years rent. Where, how-
ever, the ley is in bad condition, so that the new
tenant is not disposed to sow wheat upon it, a con-
siderable deduction is made; and in this respect the
Sussex valuation is less unfair than the Surrey. Half
(allows are not now paid for in Sussex, though they
are still allowed to the outgoing tenant in Surrey.
The Sussex farmer, I ant told, on entering his farm,
also pays for hedge-rows as uuderwood, in propor-
tion to the number of years' growth since the pre-
vious cutting. Can anything be more absurd and
more opposed to the improvement most wanted
on the Weald than such a custom? The most
intelligent agents in Sussex feel the difficulties
created by these customs are so great that they
generally advise their employers to buy them up and
let their farms on more rational principles. It is
stated that the Wcalden farmers sometimes borrow
money on their customary tenant-right ; and when
I learn that sometimes on a small farm of 100/. a
year a tenant-right of from 500/. to 6001. is some-
times paid by the incoming tenant, I am
not surprised that such. a plan should be resorted to
for avoiding some
But
of the evil of locking up the
farmer's capital. But what a new state of complica-
tion it introduces into the farmer's affairs. He lays
out his own capital in an unproductive tenant right,
and then goes and borrows money for working his
farm on the security of his own capital thus rendered
compulsorily dormant.
Upon the good land on the south coast, where tho
farms are generally occupied by men of capital, tho
valuation paid by the incoming tenant is confined
very much to acts of husbandry—the hay at a feed-
ing price, and the fodder of the straw. This is rea-
sonable enough, and it would be most desirable if
landlords and tenants throughout the country would
simplify the customary allowances to that extent.
On the south coast but little wheat has yet been
threshed, but it is very fine, and the small quantity
grown has proved to yield fine flour. In this district
I think we shall, henceforth, hear very little more
about agricultural distress.
A MIDLAND COUNTIES FARMER.

DEATH OF ONE OF BURNS'S HEROINES.—DiecI, at
Greenock, on Saturday, the 30th ult., Mrs. Findlay, relict
of Robert Findlay, Esq., of the Excise. In ordinary cir-
cumstances, the departure from this life of a respectable
lady, ripe in years, would not have afforded matter of ge-
neral interest, but it happens that the deceased was one of
the very few persons surviving to our own times who inti-
mately knew the bard in the first flush of his genius
and manhood, anl'ellisr i!hom her name and charms have
been wedded to immortal Tern. She wail the "divine"
Mims Markland, noticed in the " Belles of Meuchline."
Miss Markiand became the wife of Mr. Findlay, officer of
excise, Tarbolton, a gentleman who was appointed to in-
strait the bard in the mysteries of gauging. The con-
nexion thus formed between Burns and Findlay led to the
introduction of the latter to Miss Markland, and his subse-
quent marriage to her in September of the same year.
Mrs. Findlay was in her 23rd year at the time of her
marriage, and in her 86th at her death.—Glasgow Herald.

A MELANCHOLY EVENT occurred at Culling-
Downs, on Saturday lad. Mr. John Merryweatber, who
had been long suffering from a disordered state of the diges-
tive organs, which afxteo the nervous system generally,
was on * visit there with his friends, for the benefit of hi
health ; and it was hoped that he was improving by the
change of air and scene. On Saturday, however, he was
visited by a paroxym of the malady which had before
attacked him; under the influence of which he first destroyed
his sister, Mrs. Short (to whom he was most affectionately
attached, and who had been assiduously attending upon him
during his illness), and then himself. The sad event bas
excited the deepest sympathy in the neighbourhood, Mr.
Merryweather and his sister being both highly esteemed and
beloved by all who knew them. Inquests were held on Mon-
day last on the two bodies, and verdicts returned of " Tem-
porary derangewient."—Solistetry Journal.