The Sun.
London, England, 1828-04-17 00:00:00

to the keeping up pikes -and rents, have hitherto
been attended ,eith so little 'success. We arc
all agreed on the necessity of' an. adequate pro-
tection to agriculture, and of the expediency of
keepiog up rents, and the only difficulty is as to
the means. Agriculture would seem to be as
wayward under protection as some other objects
of the protection of our great Lords. Prices
eeill not rise and rents will not rise, even backed
by an Act of Parliament. The fact stated by
cur contemporary, that Corn does not rise as it
ought to do, is, we fear, a melancholy truth.
One little omission has led to this evil. The
Landlords protect themselves against the Poles :
but they have forgotten to protect themselves
against improvements in agriculture. Now,
if we admit that rents ought not to fall, and
that the capital laid out on the land ought to
-be made to yield a fair return—a position en-
faaced by the Duke of Wellington, with nervous
and sinewy eloquence (we think these were the
terms applied to his Grace's oratory by a con-
temporary)—precautionary measures should un-
questionably be taken against future improve-
ments. To what purpose protest we against a
lazy Pole, if after laying out fifty or sixty thou-
amid pounds in purchasing an estate, this estate
is reduced to halt its value by the discovery of
some new process, by which land, hitherto un-
productive, or slightly productive, is made to
'yield abundantly ? The principle of production
is either admissible or it is not. if it lie admis-
aible, then the agricultural improvements, which,
as Mr. Ricardo and the other economists all
-,ay, prevent corn from rising as it would other-
wise do, ought to be checked. Nay, our an-
cestors in their wisdom, were fully aware of the
mischief caused by agricultural improvements,
and of the inadequacy of all protection which
did not aim at the prevention of improvements.
We do not allude to the Acts for keeping out
Irish provisions (for Ireland was then a sepa-
rate kingdom), nor do tve allude to the attemists
of the landholders of Middles*, and Surrey to
prevent tLe snaking of turnpikr-roads, which
would expose them to competititn with the dig..
Cant counties; but to the gallant attempt which
was made by the landholders to prevent the in-
/reduction of the Flanders husbandry—a mea-
tire essentially necessary to the protection of the
then existing British husbandry. In Worled,o,e's
Husbandry, of which the fourth edition was
published in 1697, this attempt, so creditable to
the sagacity of the landholders of England, is
thus recorded,- p. "26 :—" It is found by daily
experience, not only in foreign parts, but in our
own country, that a very great improvement may
be made on the greater part of our lands, by
altering the space of such vegetables that are
naturally produced, totally suppressing the one
and propagating another in its place, which may
rejoice and thrive better there than that before,
as we evidently sec by corn sown on land where
hardly grass would have grown, what a crop you
reap ; but these are but annuals; but which raises
the greatest advantage to the husbandman is
what annually yields its increase without renova-
z ion of expellee in ploughing and sowing ; as
we find in the Clover-grass or great Trefoil,
Saintfoin or 1 loly-hay, La Lucerne, Ray-grass,
Spurrey-steel, Trefoil, Nonesuch, &c. For there
are many farms in this country that have not any
meadow, either wet or dry, belonging to them,
that may by the new improvement of some of
these seeds or grasses be able to make hay
enough of their own, without fetching it at a
dear rate many miles from home, to their great
d van t age and many dry farms are so improved
at this time, which hath been the cause of the
great fall of meadow land in the southern
parts of England, where have been the most of
these grasses propagated, and was the occasion
elf the ninny endeavours that were used by sonic
northern graziers to obtain a law to suppress
the improvement in the southern parts, least
grass or grazing grounds should become as
plentiful in these as in the other parts. It was
also the cause that there was so plentiful a stock
of hay and-grass, in that fatal winter, 1673, that
it preserved'ahnot all the cattle in those coun-
tries or place* where those grasses were most
sown ; and_ hay at no great price ; when in the
westent and northern parts of England, through
the defect of hay, -and scarcity of pasture, the
greatest part of their cattle perished, and were
forced to seek a supply from those parts whose
markets they used to fulnish." Here we have
the tccrct of prices not rising. Now, if land-
lords had stood out as they ought at that time,
and prea7libited the .artificial grasses, and the po-
pulation had continued to increase, prices would
have ri.:-xn enormously, and rents been equally
enormous. But by-gorses are by-gones ; how-
ever, they should, for their connnon interest,
determine that improvements should not be car-
ried further in agriculture., If' the very media-
nics have the sense to see that power-looms keep
down the wages of hand weavers, the agricultu-
rists may surely see that improvement may more
than-counterbalance the tendency of rents to rise.
Every thing should be sacrificed to this great
cbjec t.—Morning Chronicle.
'There is one principle which, in respect of the
Notes Bill, we hold to be indisputable.
rf the circulation of one-pound notes is to cease
all, it must cease wholly—utterly. The
Bank of England, the Bank of Ireland, the
Bank of Scotland, must all follow in the train
of the English country banker. The proposition
to allow the Batik of England to issue its
" flimsies," as they are emphatically called,
after the issue of paper similar in value had been
closed to the country banker, is so monstrously
unjust, to say nothing else, that it cannot be
listened to for a moment. As little are we to be
told that in Scotland the one-pound note must
continue to prosper business, as it has been de-
monstratively shown to have done hitherto,
while the people of England are deprived of its
advantages. Either Ministers must make up
their minds to carry the new system into full et-
joct in every quarter at all hazards, and in the
teeth of all opposition, reasonable or unreason-
able, or they must be content to retrace their steps
and recur to the old, tried, and sane plan of using,
for the purpose of a circulating medium, that
species of cum reucy which costs Tittle and wears
long, instead of that which costs much and
wastes speedily. We say this, not only because
it is not obvious to the most blunted apprehen-
sion, that if we are to have a gold currency, we
must give up our currency of paper, and that
the attempt to keep up one in one part of the_
island, and another in another, would be as
foolish and impracticable as to attempt to keep
up one in Threadneedle street and another in
Piccadilly, but because it is our wish to impress
on the public—on merchants and manufacturers
in every part of the empire—the propriety and
duty of uniting their endeavours to procure a
repeal of a measure which they must look on to
be as pregnant with injury to all who buy and
sell as it must inevitably prove to the Bankers.
For it would be a very narrow and contracted
view of the subject to regard it as one in which