The Sun.
London, England, 1861-01-19 00:00:00

to be read as rapidly as our faculty of vision
permits. Otherwise we beg, in the language of
our readers in daily life, to speak of agriculture
as the very contrast of manufacture. Till to-
wards the beginning of this century, indeed, it
was the assumption of the farmer that " slow
and easy" was the rule of vegetative nature, to
which those who dealt with her so much were
of necessity to conform. Profits were sought by
saving labour rather than employing it; by using
the rudest implements rather than the most
effective. Many of the present generation can
well remember the time when a clumsy, four-
horse thrashing machine was deemed a marvel of
mechanics ; Alien winnowing machines had to fight
the battle with the old fan and the natural breeze ;
and when a drill was sneered at by the dibblers of
wheat and the ploughers in of barley: As to a
steam-engine, fixed or moveable, not one farmer in
five hundred had ever seen one, and perhaps hardly
one in a hundred heard of one. If such a thing
happened to be mentioned in the County Gazette,
the word would be passed over, as meaning some-
thing belonging to quite another world; and if
the farmer were pressed to say what he thought it
meant, his answer might have been like one we
knew, who, on being asked what he thought the
word " inference" meant, was "sure he could not
say, but supposed it was something like a crab
harrow."

But we are indeed rapidly changing all that.
Elaborate implements of all kinds are invading
even the most rural districts ; the show of them at
London depots and in agricultural exhibitions is
something almost bewildering. And as to steam,
in the better cultivated districts, the tall chimneys
remind one of Manchester or Bradford; and the
moveable engine is heard, with its drum-like throb-
binge, on the very borders of woods and heaths.
Work, too, which, till very recently, was pronounced
impracticable for steam, even by those who
believed in steam threshing, is turned off rapidly
and cheaply by its apparently half• intelligent
power. Not only the flail, the winnowing fan, the
hand-chaffcutter, and turnip crusher, the churn,
and everything to be done by revolving motion, has
been entrusted to the great manufacturing agent,
but the plough and the draincutter have been
yoked to the engine, and made to do their work at
a rate untheught of before. Chemistry, too, has
united her contributions with those of mechanical
science; and in the hands of a LIEBIG, and his
disciples, has shown to agriculturists the true theory
of their most successful operations, furnishing
thereby a key to a still wider range of ;success ; till
Sir HUMPHREY DAVY, could he now behold the
triumphs of agricultural chemistry, would confess
that even he hardly knew the alphabet of
the science. Vast districts, indeed, still
lie more or less lingering on in the
old style, landlordism, political considerations, game
preserving, tenants' poverty, proprietors' poverty,
still uphold the miserable tenant-at-will system ;
but example is nevertheless doing its work, and
very shame will, in no long time, compel the feu-
dalist to turn Agricultural Reformer.
We have been reminded of farmers just now by
opening a little " Handbook," one of a series pub-
lished by Messrs. LONGMAN—on the " Farm
Labour," and a most elaborate and complete
" Handbook" on this subject it is indeed. Our
farming friends may rest assured that they will not
anywhere get so much for eighteenpence, or for any
sum, so far as we know, on the subject of which it
treats. And one of the prominent features of
the book is the careful and minute comparison
of the cost and value of steam, and horse-power,
and hand-labour, in those things in which they
can at all come into competition. One broad
fact is quite certain, that steam power is now
gaining on horse-power, just as till within
the last few years horse power gained
. on hand-labour. And the process is going on,
• Steam-engines for agricultural purposes are being
manufactured at the rate of 40,000 horse power
within the last four years ; but as the increase now
is more rapid than ever, considerably more than
10,000 horse power is added yearly to the means of
agriculture ; probably nearer double that quantity.
One of the most gratifying facts connected with
this is, that the price of agricultural labour is
everywhere rising. The old rick-burners them-
selves must be beginning to perceive that the
demand for labour, especially intelligent labour,
increases with the extension of labour-saving
engines. This, it is true, is no new result. The
painful period of change of work past, and the
makers of every article to which machinery has
been applied, have been a better paid class. True,
agricultural wages in all parts are low, compared
with those of mechanics, and of workmen in towns,
and in some parts they are disgrace-
fully low. Very full tables of wages in
different districts, and for all kinds of work,
are given, and while it is clear that wages are
rising, yet we meet with such precious illustrations
of it as these : " Wiltshire wages were some ten years
ago 6s. to 7s, per week for ordinary labourers ;"
they are now increased almost seventeen per cent.,
a large advance surely I—yes, an advance to eight
shillings a week! Why, even at the present rate, had
the noble lord the late member for Wilts needed
under universal suffrage to purchase his election
by a week's wages to labouring voters, according
to current report, one year's income, if he could
have spared it, would have purchased him some
200,000 voters. Even a week's income would
have procured him 4,000 votes. A rise is,
however, the uniform rule, but I ls. or 12s.
seems to be even now a high maximum.
It is satisfactory to know that the proof
furnished of the greater efficiency of steam
power which this little volumes gives, leaves the
fact quite clear that the labourer's work becomes
also lighter and better paid.

We noticed one fact at the beginning of the
book (page 15) which illustrates the political power
in the hands of landlords. Even a tolerably large
farmer is rarely independent of his landlord. A
long lease even would generally leave him, if an
improving tenant, a loser by being refused a
renewal; but no one doubts that the small farmer
is as much a slave, politically, as a negro in
Louisiana is, personally. Well, we are told that
two-thirds of the farsas in Great Britain are of a
size under one hundred acres ! There are in Eng-
land 142,358 farms, and in Scotland 44,469 farms,
under one hundred acres each ! We surely have
not far to seek for the quiescent condition of most
counties under the excitement of a general election.
Out of every thousand farms 672 are under a
hundred acres. No wonder the landlords all hate
the Ballot. They could no longer do as they
would with their own. More than 186,000 persons
would dare then to call their souls their own, and
to do their own voting. It is due to Mr.
MORTON, the writer of this valuable little book, to
say that game and politics are not even remotely
alluded to in his book. We, however, could not but
be struck with the melancholy political and social
lessons taught by some of his facts.

While we all hope to see the horrors of civil
war averted between our descendants on the other
side of the Atlantic, we yet can but look at the two
great ficgtioßa of the States, till oo lately United,