The Express.
London, England, 1853-11-11 00:00:00

AGRICULTURAL STATISTICS.

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The more the commerce of the world is disturbed
by anticipated or actual war, the more necessary it
becomes that we should be able to reckon up our
resources at home. It is quite indispensable that we
should know how much material for manufacture—

inch as wool and flax—we may rely on producing
within our own boundaries; and most urgently, what
food we raise. A year and a half ago, when the
supply of wool from Australia was believed to be
endangered, the Yorkshire manufacturers made such
loud complaints about their enforced ignorance of
the quantity of wool grown at home, that public
attention was roused k our lamentable want of
agricultural statistics; and now, when large sup-,
plies of corn from the Danube and the Black
Sea seem likely to be intercepted by war, we
are beginning to take for granted that it is an in-
tolerable thing that we should not know at any time
how much food there is in the country. We are
going to have a plan of statistical inquiry into the
agricultural produce of the kingdom. The most en-
lightened men demand it; Government intends it;
and a beginning has been undo both in Scotland and
England. In lrebuid an immense mats of informa-
tion had been obtained before. It may be considered
settled that we are to know how much grain of all
sorts we grow; how many beasts of all sorts we
rear, and what we have to feed them with ; what oil-
yielding seeds we produce, and what Sax and wool
for our manufactures; and what timber is rising for
our shipping and building. When we set about
learning what poultry, eggs, butter, and cheese we
have to offer for boots consumption and
for exportation, we shall go on, no doubt, to
inquire into the produce of our waters as
well as of the land, and may become sensible that our
people might be much better and more abundantly
fed with much leas troublo than by hungering on the
one hand and alms-giving on the other,—even if the
alms were them/mates eatable.

However this may be,—we now admit that little
can be done in the way of agricultural improvement,
and the reform of manufacturing and commercial
economy, till we understand what our resources are
in regard to the prime necessaries of life and industry.
The great question is, at present, what are the
statistics we are to obtain, and how are we to
get them ?
It is a great thing to know, by means of the Irish
survey, what the resources of Ireland were at a given
date : but it is clear that tie value of the knowledge
must decrease every year unless the first expceition
is made a mere basis for subsequent returns.
The future historian would be glad to know
what we grew of every sort this very year; but
nobody between us and the future historian would
be very much the better for it, if the statement were
not to be followed up. Our returns must clearly
be frequent. To have them annual will not do, be-
cause they will then answer only half the purpose
of guidance. The Government would be very glad
to know now, for guidance, precisely how much food
there is in the country ; but the farmer would have
only half the information he is entitled to require if
he were to know no more till this time next year.
The farmers would work, not so absolutely in the
dark as at present, but still in a groping sort of way,
if no one of them knew what anybody else was doing
till their crops were all in the barn. The returns
must be half-yearly at the very least,--after the
sowing time as well as the harvest; and many
people think they should be quarterly, and
others that they should be perpetual; that
is, that every change should be noted,
as the growth of the crops, and the character of each
season become disclosed. There is no doubt about
the benefits of such complete knowledge, if it could
be obtained. There can be no doubt that panics
would be obviated, that production and prices would
be equalised; that the supply of the prime necessary
of life would cease to have anything of the character
of a lottery ; and that, when it had become as regu-
lar and well-understood a species of commerce as
any other, the farmers would have their share of the
occasional high profits which have hitherto made the
precarious large fortunes of the corn merchants, while
exempt, with them, from the fatal depressions which
have made that trade only another name for purblind
speculation. Perpetual returns would enable the
cultivators to reduce extreme partial abundance by
timely varying their tillage; and they would of
course enable the corn merchants to obtain timely
supplies in the prospect of a deficiency. It is not
possible to have too much knowledge on any subject
whatever, and especially on that on which depends
our life, comfort, and prosperity.
How is the knowledge to be obtained? In con_
sidering this, we may begin with the fact that in
Lombardy the knowledge is obtained. There, every 1,
agricultural item is registered, even to the number
of the mulberry trees and their annual condition.
This is not the place for any discussion of the system
there, which rather comes under the head of tenant-
right argument : but it is worth mentioning that
there is a place in the world where agricultural sta-
tistics are complete, and the returns perpetual. As
with us there is no resource of custom, we have to
consider whether the returns shall be detailed to the
utmost, and with what degree of detail they shall be
published ; and again, who is to make the returns;
and once more, what is to be the guarantee of a
faithful return.

Nobody desires, we believe, that the returns shall
be published in all their details. Nobody but a
handful of official men would read them. The ques-
tion is whether detailed returns from the whole
kingdom should be attempted at all; for, once ob-
tained, there could be no difficulty in condensing and
classifying them, and presenting their results—as
the Americans have done en admirably with their
last census. The newest proposition on this bead