BOOK I. expect, that it is perhaps more like extravagance to doubt that many of them are close at hand. Chap. vii. Sect. 8. Position of One effect of such new power gained by agriEngland. culture, will unquestionably be the reclaiming and gradually fertilizing a considerable portion of the large part of the soil of the country which is now unproductive and while the grappling with the wild land, and the multiplication of means and power on the old, are going on, we may, judging of the future from the past, rationally hope that the power of agriculture will be increasing, and that the population of the country will be maintained by the exertions of a diminished proportion of its laborious hands. It has been already pointed out, it is hoped with sufficient clearness, that during such a progress, the mass of rents must be constantly increasing. In a country cultivated by farmers, with every forward movement of the people in numbers, wealth, knowledge and skill, the landed body, borne up by the swelling wave, will be lifted to a station in which their means and influence will be adapted to the fresh position of the population. The causes of this advancement are deeply seated in the physical constitution of the earth. The funds which support it are injurious to no class: they cannot be destroyed or lessened: their existence and increase are secured by the same unfailing laws which regulate those unequal returns, which the varied surface of the earth must ever make to the labors bestowed upon it. The enduring interests of the landed proprietors are thus indissolubly bound up and connected with the means, the enterprize, and the Chap. vii. limited and peculiar form of society, in which this Book I difference does afford a correct measure of the rents paid by the agricultural capitalists, who constitute the body of the tenantry. But, out of the peculiar Conclusion. rents paid in these limited districts, first to form a narrow definition of the word rent, and then to attempt forcibly to include under this word, the payments made by the tillers of the earth over the whole of its surface, is to attempt to make the realities of things bend and circumscribe themselves within the more manageable but arbitrary compass to which we may wish to confine our reasonings: it is to abandon the task of observation by which our knowledge should be earnt, that we may create an unreal foundation for systems, which, as far as they profess to be general, must necessarily be visionary and false; which can be serviceable only in the work of amusing ourselves and deluding others; and must end in leaving us ignorant of the origin, progress, and effects, of the relations between landlord and tenant, over ninety-nine parts in a hundred of the cultivated globe. I need not, I hope, press this point farther. The whole of these pages present the proper answer to such an attempt. They have effected little, if they have not shewn, that it is by no such puerile efforts to make reasoning supply the place of knowledge, that we can gather practical wisdom from enquiries into the economical condition of the great family of mankind. The existence of the revenue which is derived from lands forms, in the very dawn of civiliza Chap. vii. Sect. 8. Position of ་ BOOK I. however, in the first place it can be made abundantly clear, that tithes, when first created, must have been in the then circumstances of the English England. population, meant to act as a rent charge; and in the second place it seems agreed on all hands, not only that tithes should be put upon such a footing as to be no real burthen on agriculture; to cause no addition to the growing price of produce; but further, that they should be placed upon such a footing, that it may be palpable and clear to all branches and classes of the population on and off the land, that they are not such a burthen, and do not cause such an addition. Now this can only be effected by a general commutation. What has passed in Parliament may be taken as a proof, that the leaders of the Church are perfectly willing to co-operate in the adoption of any rational plan of this kind: should the legislature set about the task, with a serious conviction of its usefulness and importance, and intrust the execution of it to the hands of persons acting on sound views, and in a frank and honest spirit of conciliation, its very few difficulties would quickly disappear. On the immense importance of such a change in a political and religious, as well as in an economical point of view, it cannot be necessary to enlarge. The poor laws present a much more pressing and alarming mass of evil, as they do also much more serious difficulties. In the first place, the effects of the poor laws as a mere economical evil, as affecting the interests and calculations of the farmer, and the growing prices of corn, are consi derably underrated. These laws are first, a burthen the direct and indirect pressure of which, it is difficult for the farmer himself to calculate; and which it is probable therefore, that in all cases he exaggerates; and in the next place they form a much more, a very much more, serious addition to the necessary price of agricultural produce in England, than a mere arithmetical calculation would lead us to conclude they did: and they do this, because their pressure is unequally distributed, and falls by far the most heavily on those poorer soils, the expence of cultivating which must in the long run, (abstracting from the effects of foreign importation) determine the average prices of raw produce. This circumstance alone forms a sufficiently urgent reason for attempting such alterations as might get rid of this unnatural, and certainly not desirable, interference with the level of English prices. But all merely economical considerations really sink into utter insignificance, when we turn to the fearful mass of moral and political mischief which they have brought into action'. It is not too much to say, that they have thoroughly destroyed the happiness of the agricultural peasantry, and corrupted their habits as laborers and as men. These effects It is from no theoretical views that I speak, but from an intimate and assuredly a most painful experience, when I say this. I ought, however, perhaps to mention, that my personal experience has been confined to the agricultural laborers, and to the counties of Kent and Sussex. BOOK I. Chap. vii. Sect. 8. Position of England. Chap. vii. Position of 4 BOOK I. have shewn themselves but too distinctly. The Sect. 8. late disturbances among that peasantry only sheer ignorance could attribute to any peculiar actual England. pressure. The temper, and feelings, and delusions in which they originated, have been forming for some time. The outbreak might have been foreseen by all (and it was foreseen by some) familiar with the practical working and results of the system : and unless that system be annihilated, or at least essentially and fundamentally altered, those disturbances will, it may confidently be expected from the nature of the case, have been neither the last, nor the most dangerous. And still, evil and dangerous as they have been, they were only one effect and indication of the miserably distorted and irritated feelings of which they were the result. The legislation of the country on this subject has been bad, and deserves unquestionably much of the blame which has been shifted to the shoulders of those who have administered its regulations. But neither, certainly, has their administration been blameless, Bad laws have laid the foundation; and then, sometimes by bad management with very good intentions, and sometimes by bad management with very questionable intentions, the poor have gradually been brought into a condition in which they are led to attribute unhesitatingly every privation and every disappointment to those neighbors, under whose control they find themselves, and who are to them the visible source of all the good and evil of their lot. When men are in this position, the consequences are most |