The Sun.
London, England, 1846-12-26 00:00:00

S N 7 DECEMBER 26, 1846.

AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION
IN IRELAND.
The following are quotations from the appendix to
minutes of evidence taken before Commissioners on the
occupation of land in Ireland, and consist of the leading
portions of a paper on agricultural education, by Mr.
Thomas Skilling, Model Farm, Glasnevin, Dublin,
printed among the documents in that appendix:—
That Ireland and her population are to be improved
by the people themselves is, in my mind', an incontro-
vertible fact ; I mean the
.people of all classes. The
poverty, discontent, and turbulence of the great body of
her inhabitants arise from ignorance, neglect, and mis-
management of their Weirs. That the lower orders are
ignorant is not perhaps so much their own fault as that
of the superior or higher classes, who have been placed
in power and authority over them ; who ought to have
been their natural guardians and instructors, but who
have overlooked their duties and trust, and are now
reaping the bitter fruits of their previous neglect. The
chief cause, however, of the poverty of the masses
arises from their own apathy, indolence, and mismanage-
ment. This cannot be too frequently brought forward,
inculcated, and placed in the strongest point of view
before the public mind. It is very wrong—it is cruel and
wicked to make the people believe that the power of
raising them from a state of degradation, wretchedness,
and poverty, does net rest with themselves, but is pos-
sessed by some superior or extern power, whose caprice
or malevolence is withholding their just rights, nay, the
very necessaries and comforts of life from them.
Nothing is so easily accomplished as to make a man be-
lieve that there is an excuse for all his errors, faults, and
frailties ; and that there is a power over which he has
no control, and which he may lay the blame that is
producing all his embarrassments. This is peculiarly
the case with farmers. It is no difficult matter with a
farmer who is labouring his land in wet, among weeds,
without stock, without manure, without any of the
auxiliaries which would produce successful cultivation ;
it is no difficult matter, I say, to convince him that all
his evils arise from being rack rented, no matter what
the rent he pays may be. He complains of the want of
stock, the want of capital, at the same time he cannot be
induced to use judiciously the producers of all capital,
his bands and his soil. The want of competent know-
ledge among landed proprietors and their agents, has
produced more misery and turbulence in Ireland than
perhaps any other existing cause. It is pure igno-
rance that prompts a landlord or his agent to dis-
possess the small holders on his property, and to
throw his estate into large farms, because he sees large
farms in Great Britaifi, in a country differently circum-
stanced in every respect; and it is want of knowledge
and something more that induces him to allow his land
to be comparatively useless, grazing sheep and cattle at
20s. or 30s. per acre, yet charges the poor cottier from
84 to 12/. for raising his wretched subsistence, a crop of
cup or lumper potatoes. It must be ignorance that pro-
duces these and a multitude of other evils. It is not
any inclination or morbid desire on the part of the
higher classes to persecute, distress, and render miserable
their fellow-creatures under them; and though I point
out the errors of the great, I by no means wish to adopt
the too prevalent habit of attributing all the evils of Ire-
land, all the discontent and misery of her people, to the
tyranny and oppression of her landlords. An unjust
and malignant shout has been raised against them, kept
up and joined in by those who should have known
better. The great majority of them are kind, bene-
volent, and in every way disposed to promote the hap-
piness and comfort of the people under them. A bad
landlord is the exception, not the rule. Ido believe
the greatest anxiety prevailing among the landlord class
at present is, how they shall best promote the pros
perity of their tenants, and thereby increase their in-
come and improve their property ; but their almost
general want of practical knowledge in the proper ma-
nagement and true value of land, and their supplying the
vacancy with silly, sometimes pernicious advice, pre-
vents their accomplishing what they so much desire.
We hear much of rack-rents and oppressive landlords,
but if there were more improving tenants there would be
fewer bad landlords. The people are steeped in igno-
rance and poverty. They are waiting in listless apathy,
and calling on Parliament and Government to relieve
their distress ; it never occurring to them that for the
real purpose of improving their social condition, remov-
ing discomfort, and attaining a degree of prosperity and
happiness, they have more in their ewn power than both,
the Government and Parliament ; like the waggoner in
the fable, they must "whip whip the horses, and put their
shoulder to the wheel." Were all classes, from the
landlord to the labourer, to lay their heads and minds
together—have but one object in view, the improvement
and happiness of the whole—act with mutual confidence,
friendly feeling, and a continued reciprocal interchange
of gocd offices; if ever this state of things arrive, the
duties of Parliament and of Government will be very
easily discharged.
A man possessed of even a moderate share of agricul-
tural knowledge, scientific and practical, travelling on
the top of a coach through Ireland, may easily explain
the cause why the agricultural population are wretched
and poor. Let him drive east, west, north, or south,
even through the best cultivated districts, and he will
find ample cause for the poverty of the people. He will
see the whole face of the best natural soil and country
intersected and covered with an immense number of large
crooked and useless ditches and gripes ; the ground
saturated with wet, from the rain that falls and cannot
get off ; or from the large open gripes, which keep up a
regular supply in the fields ; or from land springs or
main springs, rising unheeded in different points through
his fields ; at the same time the surface of the ground
covered with stones, as if supplied for the necessary pur-
pose of drainage. He will see a portion of the land
scratched and turned over by the plough three or four
inches deep, the same portion and depth, that has been
scratched and turned over by himself and his ancestors
for centuries, completely exhaused by a succession of
grain crops, and filled with roots of weeds which
supply the chief ;crop of the following year. He will
remark the total absence of anything like a regularly
formed or respectable dung heap; the wretched stock
running over two-thirds of his holding, summer and
winter, it lying in miserable pasture for that purpose,
without green food or sustenance for cattle to produce
manure during the winter, or milk for the use of himself
and family ; at November he finds the whole produce in
the yard, a few small stacks of graih and a few pits of
potatoes are all the man has to pay his year's rent,
taxes, and other charges, clothe, and feed his family,
and support his stock during the winter.
Should the traveller go in another direction, he finds
the scene changed —the whole face of the country has a
different aspect, the farms are large, and all in pasture,
with numerous splendid flocks of sheep and bullocks
grazing upon them. This is the country for fattening
the bullocks and starving the people ; here the oxen are
luxuriating on the richest pastures, and the people
starving on lumper potatoes in their miserable huts,
without even a potato garden. Here the agent or
middleman will let an acre of land to fatten cattle for
305., but charge the poor,labourer or cotter from fa. to
12/. for the iniquitous con-acre. The fair-green of
Ballinasloe annually presents one of the most singular
anomalies on the face of the earth, and a fair
specimen of the effects of true Irish misrule, not
Parliamentary or Executive misrule, but the mis-
rule and mismanagement of the proprietors of the
soil, their agents and middlemen. We there see a spe-
cimen of the most beautiful, well-conditioned, highly-fed
cattle and sheep in the world, and along with them the
most wretched, lean, half starved, ragged, and miserable-
looking human beings to be found; and the very parties
who create and perpetuate this injustice and oppiession,
this anomalous state of things, which produces discon-
tent, turbulence, periodical famine, continued suffering
and misery, these are the parties who are loudest in
their stouts fur justice to Ireland, and who even go so
far as to take the benefit of this misery, to excite the
passions of the people to further their own selfish and
political ends—these are the people who cry loudest for
Government interference and Acts of Parliament to re-
lieve the misery in Ireland; yet were the Government to
pass a law by which they would be compelled to break
up their old pastures, raise green and grain crops, by
which three times the present quantity of cattle could be
kept on the land, and three times the number et people
supported, all employed, well paid, and well fed—if such
a law were announced that would interfere with their
indolent, absurd, and iniquitous customs, it would be
inet by them with more determined and. virulent opposi-
tion than a Coercion Bill, or the enforcing of martial law
in the country.
It is not new laws we want, it is a new change of sys-
tem, a change by all classes, and a change brought round
by the combined efforts of the classes themselves, who
alone have the power to achieve such desirable objects.
It is not law, but knowledge we want ; it is not the nos-
trums of the Legislature, but the instruction from the
schoolmaster.
To read, write, and cipher, is considered quite a suf-
ficient education for a clodhopper ; and the blockhead
of a family is almost universally selected for the far.
mer. Every other trade or calling has a regular time,
more or less, for its acquirement—the carpenter, mason,
blacksmith, tailor, even the brogue-maker and chimney-
sweep must serve a certain apprenticeship before he is
allowed or considered competent to practise his business.
Not so the farmer. Any person capable of handling a
spade, holding a plough, or performing any of the com-
mon practical farm operations—even those without any
degree of practical knowledge—will without hesitation
engage in a speculation to conduct all the various and
complicated operations, managing in various soils, sea-
sons, courses of cropping, &c., which would require the
highest degree of scientific knowledge and practical
skill. Such things have kept the knowledge of the
science and practice of agriculture so far behind al-
most all the mechanical trades and other profes-
sions, and steeped the great masses of the agricul-
tural population of the three kingdoms in compara-
tive ignorance. Such is this state of ignorance, that
it has been, and I believe in some places is still de-
bated, whether it is possible or practicable to teach
the great leading principles of the science and practice
to schoolmasters and scholars, and diffuse this important
education through the community the same as any other
branch of knowledge. Thinks to the Commissioners of
Education, this great question has been settled and set
at rest. They are the first public or private body in the
empire who conceived the idea, and put it in practical
operation, of having the leading principles of the science
and practice of agriculture taught in every school, to the
children of the middle and lower classes, who attend
. these schools; and after several years of trial and expe-

PRICE SD.

rience, the system has succeeded far beyond their most
sanguine expectations, though the experiment has by no
means been fairly carried out, nor did it get anythirg
like justice. The want of funds and of books to carry
forward the system has been much against its successful
operation, yet we have seen as much as must convince
the most sceptical that, with increased means, and some
slight improvement in the mode of conducting the thing,
in an incredibly short time, and at a trifling expense,
this imFortant and indispensable branch of knowledge
may be spread over the whole face of the country; incul-
cated and impressed on the youth and rising generation,
whereby a thirst for knowledge and a taste fur all kinds
of improvement will be the consequence, and an entire
change in the habits and condition of the lower orders
will be produced.

The Board have begun at the right end of the subject
—they propose to commence with the children, not the
old people; and there is demonstrative proof that they
are right.
The plan adopted at the model farm for the purpose of
training the masters, may be pointed out and explained.
During the time the masters are in training in the lite-
rary department is that chosen for giving the agricul-
tural knowledge alto; all the teachers in connexion with
the Board, amounting to 2,800 or more, are intended to
he trained in both departments. Of this number nearly
700 have been already trained in agriculture during the
past six years, since the model farm has been established.
The men are brought up in classes, averaging sixty indi-
viduals at a time, and remain five months. They are
lodged and fed in the neighbourhood of the model farm,
and fed on the produce. Five mornings in the week
they attend a lecture on gardening during half an hour;
and a lecture on the science and praetice of agriculture
during one hour—lectures and examinations alternately.
The forenoon of every Saturday they go upon the farm
and see all the practical operations going on there, and
have everything important explained to them. During
the course the lectures comprise the following sub-
, j ects:—

"The usual and common errors prevailing in the
management of land ; the effects of such and the reme-
dies." " The importance of clearing off and levelling
useless ditches and fences." " The laying out farms in
a regular and judicious manner, and according to a scien-
tific rotation." " Draining—its neglect, its importance,
and effects ; different modes of." '• Deepening the soil,
different modes of, and its importance." " The c3nse-
quences of following a succession of grain crops." "The
importance of a rotation ; and the raising a sufficiency of
green crops for cattle feeding." " All the most useful
rotations explained." " The consequences of weeds
growing upon land, and the best methods of extirpating
them." " The importance of a large stock of cattle on
all farms, particularly small." " Cattle make money and
mature ; house-feeding them for that purpose summer
and winter ; the kinds and quantities of food during the
different seasons ; with the improved methods of care
and feeding." " The error of keeping too many horses,
or any at all, on a small farm ; the expenses attending a
horse during the year, one horse displacing two cows ;
the comparative profit or loss between cows and horses
on small farms." " General state of housing—dwelling
and offices ; modes of planning and laying out, how to
place the different apartments ; the dung heap—how to
collect and manage it during the year, to place it in rear
of the houses ; the cowhouse, dairy, piggery," &c.
"Habits of the people—indolence, carelessness, want of
energy and economy, want of early habits of industry ;
regardless of the value of time, &c." This is the first
course.