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riences are shared more widely than is commonly supposed. It is thus that the 'Nabab,' in defending his election for Corsica, is represented as addressing the assembled deputies of the French Republic. Ah! I have known what it is to fight with misery, hand to hand, and it is a dire struggle. But to contend with a superfluity of riches, to defend one's happiness, honours, and peace of mind, behind a crumbling heap of gold, that crushes you as it falls, is a far more repugnant and disheartening struggle. Never, in the darkest hour of poverty, have I suffered the weariness, the agony, the sleepless anxieties, which wealth has brought upon me—wealth, that dreaded, hated, choking burden.'

Mr. Carlyle has depicted with powerful touches the superior felicity of a life begun and ended in the same station, and amid the scenes, which have been familiar from infancy:

The wealth of a man is the number of things which he loves and blesses, which he is loved and blessed by. The herdsman in his poor clay shealing, where his very cow and dog are friends to him, and not a cataract but carries memories for him, and not a mountain-top but nods old recognition; his life, all encircled in blessed mother's-arms, is it poorer than Slick's, with the ass-loads of yellow metal on his back?'

The trained and philosophic mind finds, indeed, deep pleasures in a contemplative existence. To the active, anxious, practical man of business a life of ease can seldom prove a life of happiness. He regrets, when it is too late, the power, authority, and influence which

he formerly wielded, and which he lost by his retirement from the sphere of his successful labours. The hopes he would fain rest on his successor are dashed aside by repeated examples of riches misapplied. The inheritance of wealth has rarely proved the source of pure and unalloyed happiness. It exposes the feeble to temptation; it casts on stronger natures a heavy load of responsibility.

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CHAPTER XVII.

MR. CHAPLIN'S MOTION FOR A ROYAL COMMISSION ON

AGRICULTURAL DEPRESSION.

cultural

in Parlia

I KNOW not what kindly motive it was which induced The agriMr. Chaplin to pay me the compliment of asking me question to second the motion for the appointment of a Royal ment. Commission to inquire into the causes of, and the remedies for, the distressed condition of British agriculture which he recently submitted to the House of Commons in an able speech; but it so happens that while he is specially identified with the proprietors of land, I am connected perhaps more closely than any other member of the House by tradition and family ties with that less distinguished, but interesting and fast disappearing class, the yeomen farmers of the northern counties. I felt the greater satisfaction in seconding the motion for a Royal Commission, because I was anxious that the farmers and the landed interest generally should be assured that they had friends on both sides of the House, and that any reasonable proposal for their welfare would receive the full and impartial consideration of Parliament.

The case for a Royal Commission was very fairly stated in the Economist' newspaper. We are,' said the writer, in the midst of the most extended and

BB

The

farmer's

in face of

competi

tion.

severe agricultural distress which has prevailed in this country for perhaps thirty years, and it becomes necessary to investigate the development of an industry, which is the largest and most powerful and diffused of any in the United Kingdom.'

If the difficulties of the British farmer were such difficulties only as are incidental to a succession of rainy seasons, it would be absurd to ask for a Royal Commission. The Meteorological Office would be the proper authority to consult, and we know how little their science can do for us in the way of prediction; but the landed interest of this country is now, for the first time, brought face to face with a most extensive and vigorous competition. It is a competition which it is the interest of the consumer to encourage, and one with which the Legislature will be too wise to interfere, but it is also a competition which must have very serious effects on the agriculture of this country, and which may possibly result in throwing some of our inferior lands permanently out of cultivation.

It cannot be said that English agriculture, under the conditions which have until lately prevailed, has been unsuccessful or unskilful. Monsieur Léonce de Lavergne, in his able work on English Agriculture, has done full justice to the ability and enterprise of our farmers. Our land, though on the whole inferior, has yielded more wheat per acre than that of any other country, and, taking sheep and cattle together, more animals are raised for the butcher in England than in any part of the Continent. The practical skill of the British farmer has been conspicuous in the manage

ment of sheep. The improvements in the breed were commenced in Leicestershire by Mr. Bakewell, and the results in the increased production of mutton are signally illustrated by M. de Lavergne. He says that assuming that France and the United Kingdom each possess an equal number of sheep, which number he took at 35,000,000-it is actually 32,500,000each country would obtain from its flocks an equal quantity of wool, but the weight of mutton, assuming 8,000,000 sheep to be slaughtered annually, would be, in France, 39,600,000; in England, 99,000,000 stone.

The United States, however, have lately poured into our markets such copious and increasing supplies of wheat and animal food, that it has become evident that our old-established systems of cultivation, however perfected they may be by the expenditure of the capital of the landlord, and by the skill of the occupying tenantry, must undergo a very serious change. It is most important, therefore, that the landed interest of this country should be informed, through the inquiries of the proposed Commission, as to the probable course of trade with the United States in agricultural produce. What are the articles in which it is hopeless to undertake a competition with the superior natural resources of the great Continent of the West? What are the articles in which our soil and climate and vicinity to our own markets give us the greatest advantage ? What steps should be taken to relieve a landowner, whose resources are exhausted, of the responsibility of

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