The Express.
London, England, 1853-07-15 00:00:00

ROYAL AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY OF

ENGLAND.

(ram( oua

GLOUCESTER, Tuunaray.
Last evening the Pavilion dinner, the great fea-
ture of the meeting, was held at the society's Pavilion in
the Spa grounds. The attendance numbered about 800,
and the chair was taken by Lord ASHBURTON, tt a Hon.
It. H. Clive, 31. P., officiating as vice-chairman. Among
the noblemen and gentlemen present were:—Earl Beau-
champ, Earl Pelvis, Viscount Hereford, Lord Bridport,
Lord Bernett, Mr. H. H. Foley, H P., Mr. J. Bailey,
M.P., Sir T. D. Acland, 24. P., Mr. Rushout, M.P., Mr.
Allcock, M.P., Mr. Blount, M.P., Mr. Ricardo, M.P.,
Mr. Clifford, M.P., Mr. Hippesley, M.P., Sir W. Cod-
rington, M.P., Mr. H. Brown, M.P., Mr, Kingscote, M.P.,
Mr. Pricy, H.P., Mr. Portman, M.P., Mr. Mullinge,
M.P., Professor Symonds, Professor Waye, General Arista
(of Mexico), Judge Hulliburton (Nova Scotia), W. Dent,
Esq., Rev. Dr. June, Master of Pembroke, &c., &c.
After the usual introductory touts had been given,
The CJIAIUMAN proposed the health of the American
minister, Mr. Ingersoll.

Mr. Iscensou, in his reply, alluded to the relatiee posi.
tions of England and America in a commercial point of
♦iew. Agriculture, he said, was in many of its pro .uctions
especially tho bond of union between Great Britain and
America. A portion of the agricultural productions of
America was that whirh might be called the " daily bread "
of the manufacturers of Great Britain, and busiueu—cer-
tainly in their manufacturing towns—was to a great extent
influenced by the operations of the United States. Mr. In-
gersoll also made some humorous comparisons of English
and American soils. The health of the chairman was after-
wards given.

The PRE6ILANT, in acknowledging the toast, observed
that this society was founded on the principle that God
helps those who help themselves. (Cheers.) They bad
trusted to themselves alone in spite of discouragement; they
had put their shoulders to the wheel, and had so prospered
that if any one of the illusteious strangers that had attended
their board, asked what RAI the produce of the country
which we most ereemed among themselves and gave them
the highest notion of the enterprise, of the skill, of the in-
dustry of the Englishmen, they would tell us it was not our
silk—for they might find more beautiful silk in France—it

was not our cloth, for they found liner cloth in Belgium—
that they had found cotton of more brilliant colours in
Switzerland—that even our cutlery had somewhat degene-
rated ; and that in shipbuilding we were certainly not
superior, if not inferior to the Americans; but they would
add that there was one produce, the excellence of wkiei,

no other country could approach, one produce that they
came from all quarters to see, and which they
were ready to purchase—aye, at fahulous prices—and that
produce was the produce of the farmers of England.
(Cheers.) They would tell them further that while our
ants of industry, Manchester, London, Spitalfields, or Mac-
clesfield, sent to France or Belgium, or Italy, for persons to
direct and assist them in the higher branches of their in-
dustry, all the world came here to learn fanning. He ven-
tured to assert that there was no calling which met with
such difficulties as their calling. (Hear.) He asserted
forth( r, that the contest with those difficulties did employ
and develop a degree of resource of mind, of energy, and of
solid judgment that was scarcely produced by any other
industrial pursuit. For example, they might take the case
of the cotton spinner—he bought his machine, put his
cotton in at one end, and took the finished article out
at the other. He had no difficulties to deal with.

(Hear, hear.) He dealt, it was true, with the powers
of nature, but with those powers placed in his hand

domesticated and absolutely subjugated by the machinery
that he employed. But it was not so with the farmer. The
farmer dealt with nature, wild, wayward, and capricious.
He encountered it in the storm, in the murrain of his cat
Ue, In the blight of insects, in the deluge of rain. His
casualties were the casualties of one who had launched his
bark upon the stormy waves of the Atlantic, while the ca-
sualties of the other were rather the casualties of the cap.
taro of the bark towed on the peaceful bosom of the canal.
(Cheers.) The consequence was that the farmer of the pre-
sent day was no more like the farmer of the olden time than
was the steam ship which forced its passage against the
wind and tide like the old bark which lay to in every
hard wind, and made, perhaps, but one voyage a year.
They had raised their calling from being a mere empyrical
pursuit to be a dominant art and master science, which em-
ployed under it the subordinate co-operation and labour of
the chemist, the physiologist, and the mechanic. (Cheer.)
The result of all this was, that the farmer, thwarted by na-
ture, and smarting under discouragement, had neverthe
less, by skill and perseverance, succeeded in raising the

character of the produce of England, and not only that, but
bad placed their own peculiar produce amongst the most
honoured of the produce of the country. The farmers had
made a great and generous sacrifice for the benefit of the
whole community— (eheers)—and had improved more even
than those in whose favour the sacrifice had been made.
It might be asked, why was it that he had introduced
that topic. He had done it not merely to give praise to those
to whom it was due, but to shame those who still clung to
the prejudices of their forefathers—(cheers)—who, in the
midst of light, would live in darkness. What was to be-
come of those who, with this example before their eyes, still
employ hand labour where machinery might be cheaper
and better employed? What was to become of those who,
with prize stock before their eyes, continue to raise long
scrap of beasts which no feeding could fatten ?—(hear,
hear)—of those who allowed the running of their fields to
drain into the ponds out of which the cattle drank ?—of
men whose cattle were unhoused, whose fields were un-
drained, and whose horses were waled ? They might de-
pend upon it that the days of such a man as a farmer were
numbered. They were condemned, net by the law of man,
but by the law of God—by that law which he had made to
regulate the growth of all things. Such persons were like the
plant that, stopped in its growth, was first covered, and
then stifled; and the farmer could no more hope to avert
that time from himself than to add a cubit to his stature.
(Hear) He trusted they would allow him to say a few words
more with regard to the class of landlords. He took it that

they ought to be the first to come forward to propose fit and
proper terms to the occupiers, but he would more particu-
larly call their attention to the happy and extensive change
that was now taking place in the relation between the em-
ployer and the labourer—a change which he had long
wished for, and which he thanked heaven he had now lited
to see, for it would have the effect of raising the labourer
from a state of vassalage to that of an independent being.
It would make him a better workman, a better parent, •
better citizen, and it would raise him out of the selfish de.
spondency which had made him leu energetic and less
useful than he had otherwise been. (Cheers.) Landlord',
however, had a still further duty to perform. They must
improve their holdings and improve their houses—(cheers)
—they must give them more comforts. It was by that
means only that they could make the homes of their fore-
fathers more attractive than the gold fields of Australia or

the increasing wages of other agriculturists.
The Earl of lIAHROWDY, in giving the toast of the
labourers, observed that ten or fifteen years ago a distin-
guisbed writer on political economy had expressed doubts
as to the advantage to the labouring classes of improve-
ments in agriculture, because he said that, by the introduc.
tion of machine., a diminution of employment of hand
labour would be the result, He recollected where a farmer
in the Vale of Evesham employed ten men on his farm
before the introduction of improvements, he employed thirty
or forty afterwards, when he was using every kind of im-
provement in agriculture. (Hear, hear.) They also found
that, where a district was backward in improvements of
this kind, there was to be found an idle, pauperised, and
vicious population. (Applause.) If the belief existed that
the introduction of improved machinery would tend to
diminish the employment of human labour, it could not be
entertained any longer, now that the country was not over-
loaded with a labouring population, for all their enterprises
were formed on the expectation of having a vast amount of
labour always at our doors. They bad found at first that
they had a superabundant population in their own parishes ;
and, if they had not that, they bad hordes of Irish immi-
grating into this country, ready to do the work at a very
low price. Now, the circumstances of their position were
entirely altered, and the stream of emigration of Irish labour
had been diverted from our 'bores to other and foreign
countries ; and not only this, but the stream of emigration
had sot in from our own parishes, and farmers were begin-
ning to consider how the labour of one pair of hands could
accomplish the work of two, if not of more. To enable
them to do this was one of the great works of the Royal
Agricultural Society. He regarded it as a most important
thing that they should have some stimulus to improvement.
Let them not then be jealous of education ; let them not be
jealous lest their labourer'. child should get an education
equal to that of their own. If they did it would Do their
own fault, because they had the means at liand in suitable
schools. They would shortly have brought to their doors
opportunities of moral, religious, and useful mental cultiva-
tion, and if they did not allow their children to reap the
advantages thus offend it would be their own fault.

(Hear, hear.) Let them not then, he would again say, be
jealous of the labouring man. The Scotch were the best
educated of the labouring classes, and they were notoriously
the most industrious men in the British dominions.
Sir Itonvaiest Idoseenteow proposed the Agricultural
Societies thoughout the World." (Cheers.) Adverting to
the connexion of agriculture with science, the learned gen-
tleman said the days were gone by when it was necessary
for any Dominic Sampson of geology, or any itinerant
geologist like himself, to go about informing the ►gricul-
turists of the country of the connexion between the soil
they cultivated and the works that he examined. They
were all aware of it, and the volumes of the Society con-
tained professional papers on the subject. Having expressed
his delight at the fuct that the first prize of the society had
been offered for a treatise on the geological structure of the
county—the rocks forming the foundation upon which all
agriculture rested—the speaker went on to dilate upon the
gratification it afforded him to he one of the very few gen-
tlemen whom the society had chosen to honour with the
distinction of being members of the Royal Geographical
Society of Ergland. Ile concluded by giving the Health
of Judge Huliburton" (Sam Slick).
Judge HALIBCRTON, in his reply, said he lead to thank
them for the honour they had dune him in naming some of
his books—books that he never could have written unless
be had spent his whole life in the country—unless it were
that he had never lived in towns, but among the country-

men and farmers. lie loved the farmers—(hear, hear)—
from the opulent farmers (and it took very little to make a
man opulent iu a poor country) dos. n to the occupier of the
log hut—and the happiest days, or rather hours, of his life
he had spent in their society. It was front his talking to
these people, and knowing their feelings and prejudices—
and they, too, had their prejudices like other people—
it was from Allowing them intimately that he had had
vane little insight into that human nature which they had
done him the honour of saying he had put in his books.
Ile had not the honour to be an Englishman, but was a
native of a distant part of the world. A hundred and fifty
yeses had now elapsed since his forefathers lett this country.
Whether the.- slipped eff at the aasiz,s—(loud laughter, in
which the karmd judge joined heartily)—whether they
slipped off at the assizes, or were seat out by one of his own
cloth at the public expense, there was nobody rem old
enough to say (renewed laughter) and therefore it
would be perhaps as well that they should nut make too
strict an inquiry into that matter. (Laughter ) It was a
long time to be absent, notwithstanding that his excellent
friend the American Minister had talked about that country
being able to receive the surplus population of England;
but he (the l arned judge) should like to emigrate back
to Engler d again. (Laughter.) It would he his de-
light and happiness to retern to England ; seal he wax
not sure that if one of his learned brethren would
transport him here, that he would net commit
some crime, provided that there was no moral guilt attached
t. (Laughter.) Turning, then, to the oLject which had
to their usscrublieg that day, he assured them that he
had never spent two such delightful days in his life as
that and the previous day, which be had devoted to the wit-
nessing of the exhibition. (Loud applause.) As a prac-
tical farmer himself—one who was engaged in, and was
fond of, the cultivation of the soil—be had come from tho
north, from Scotland, for the purpose of being present at
the exhibition to witness the improvements that had taken
place in agriculture during the last ten years. Ile had ob-
served, in every place (and it gave him peat pleasure that
without the least flattery he could say so), that within the
last ten years, since he weal's% in this country, such an im-
provement had taken place that could scarcely he conceived.
(Cheers.) And the improv. meet in that class to which
Lord liarrowby had referred—the lower orders—had been
greater than in any other class, for they were better fed,
better clothed, better paid, and respected themselves.

Earl Pow's gave the health of Mr. l'usey, the president
elect, and some other toasts were also given an the course
of the evening.

The prize list for cattle, &c., was completed last night,
and the following are the principal awards:—

SHORT 1101 INS,

401. to Right lion. L rd Berner; of lieythorpe.hall, Tugby, Leices-
ter, for a bull tot egret. dire lour years old; second wiz, of 204. to
Rich. Str Gun, of Stolid Hinton, Swindou, Wilts, fur a romilar beast.
25/. to Rich. Booth, of Warlaby, Northallertori, Vork,for a bull more
than one year old ; second prize of 151. to Wm. Fletcher, of Badman-
thwuite, Man.fleld, Notts. 201. to Henry Smith, of the Grove, Crepwell
Butler, ',husband, Notts, fur a cow. tsf. to Richard Booth, to a
better not claming three years old ; woad prize of IW. to Ric Lard
Booth, of Wariaby, Northatlerton. :01. to it. H. Allen, of Lorigcrofts-
hall, Lichfield, fur a yearling heifer.
}IEREFORM%
404. to Right lion. Lord Berwick, of Cr oalibll% Shrewsbury, for a
' bull not exceeding four years old; second prize of 201. to John Cu-
warchue, of Stockton Bury, Lanolin .ter. 254. to Edward Price, of
Courbouse, Lewnin.ter, for a bull more than one year al. Second
prize of 154. to Right Hon. Lunt Berwick, of Cronkblll, Shrewsbury.
Cl.I to John Monkhouse, of the Stow, Hereford, for a cow ; second
prize of 101. to James Ark.'s, of Prinknitsh Park. Paiviwiek, (Am-
meter. 151. to Right llog. Lord Bet wick, of Crubkhill, ahrewrbury,
for a heifer not exceeding three years old • second grist: of lot, to
Phillp Turner, of rho Leen, Pembndge, Letlnitiator.
pRVONS. _ _

4al. to George Turner, of Barton, near Exeter, for a bull not ex-
ceeding tour yelre od. 25!. to George Turner, of Barton, near
Exeter, far &bull more than one year old. 20/. to George Turner, of
Barton, near Exeter, for a cow. 151. to George Turner, of Barton,
near Exeter, for a heifer under three yearn old. 10!. to Janice
Quarthy. of E °Band Mouse, South Mutton. tor a yearling heifer.
Foe Welsh Ereeda prizes were awarded to William Powell,
nf Ealwyanewydd Margara, Taibach, Glamorgan, and to George
Goode.