, 1875-08-14

dlu tuo CukIIO CIh byobNAAAS Via
body must be ruinedtb a process which
primarily and simply gas the multiplying.
facilitating, and chIppiening the supply of
food. AS profit OF, home agriculture
must disappear, SO asp must all who de-
pended on it, including the free labourer.
All would be pauperiz5sd, for poverty, of
course, would still have its legal rights
aud claim its dues. But the peasantry
itself would be a looser when land could
no longer be cultivated with profit.
What really threatened the country was
that it would be covered with manufac-
tories to supply with calico, hardware,
crockery, and other goods, the more tortu-
nate nations of the world still cultivating
their soil or tending their hocks and
herds.
Now, what is it that we have seen at
Taunton, and that thousands have been
focking up to see from the primitive dairy
farms of the West7 We have seen many
things that only a few years ago We're
regarded as costly and Improbable %curiosi-
ties. Men of fortune, with a turn for
science, looked at them as Others of their
rank looked on pictures or race-horses-as
toys proper to their condition, in which
they might be allowed to indulge. In this
day a much better class Of machines-bct-
ter in make as well as design-are minute
ly and scientifically scanned by people
who have really to depend upon farming
who know it to be Il matter Of close cal
culation, vet capable of yielding a good
livelihood to those who will apply their
whole attention to it. Strange indeed is
it to see exceedingly plain agriculturists,
not always easily distlnguishable from
their own Better class labOurers, giving a
minute inspection to a long line of
machines, armed each with q wonderful
apparatus of shares, knives, scissors, or
hooks, all intended to enable one man and
one horse to do the work Of two or three.
They will think a visit to the Show very
i~lI-spent if they do not make a purchase
or two, more or less experimental ; and
they are pretty sure to find it the object
of Jealous comparison on its arrival in the
parish. They will shortly find they have
to lend it, or let it on hire and, as they go
on, they find that wealth in machines,
instruments, and tools is even better than
wealth 10 money and land, because more
to be depended on and more directly
available. There never was a season more
calculated to bring this out disagreeably
to some people. 1t ayails not to have the
best land in the parish, the best supply
of water trickling through the roots Of
the growing grass; it avails not to have
manfred the ground as far as it will bear;
it avails not even to have the money for
the payment of wages at a high harvest
rate it avails not even to have several
fine days coming at odd times, if the en-
ployer have not the machines ready to
utilize the precarious sunshine and snatch
a prey from the elements. Machines are
the artillery of agricultural warfare in
these days there is no doing without them.
We have heard of a gentleman with
q dozen or two acres of parklike meadow
about his house finding that not a labour-
er was to be got in the nick of time. Car
riages and carriage horses he had, and
that was all, for he had not thought it
necessary to cucumber himself with dead
stock. Neither machines nor Wagons
were to be hired. So what did he do but
turn out his entire household, and make
everybody do what he could. Then, by
the aid of some light carts, he managed to
get in his hay as soon as his neighbours.
But what was his case, and what he could
well bear, has been this season the case