Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 67, No. 411, January 1850Various
History
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 67, No. 411, January 1850
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
employment; lower the revenue; augment the poor-rates; and utterly
disorganise society. And yet what help for it? The farmer cannot
be expected to pay for the privilege of losing several hundreds
per annum by cultivation. Let Mr Watson's statement be examined,
and it will appear that the enterprising and skilful tenant of a
farm of five hundred acres, in the best corn district of Forfar,
cannot clear his expenses unless the rent of the land is reduced
by one-half, and, even if that were done, he could only realise a
profit of sixpence per acre! Such a result, we fairly allow, would
appear, at first sight, to be incredible; yet there it is--vouched
for by men of name, character, and high reputation. This is the
extreme case; but, if we pass to Berwickshire, we shall find that a
reduction of half the rent would barely place the tenant in the same
position which he occupied previous to the withdrawal of protection.
Look at No. IV., and the result will appear worse. Even were one
half of the rent remitted, the profits of the tenants, at present
prices, would be less by £100 than they were at the former rates
of corn. Very nearly the same results will be brought out, if we
calculate the necessary reductions on the rents of the Mid-Lothian
farms. Lord Kinnaird may see in those tables the fate which is
in store for him; and he cannot hope to escape it long, even by
inserting, in his new leases, the most stringent stipulations as
to money payments which legal ingenuity can devise. It is just
possible that "men of business habits," retired shopkeepers, and
others of that class, may be coaxed and persuaded into trying
their hands at a trade of which they know literally nothing. They
may be incautious enough to put their names to covenants, not
conceived according to Mr Caird's liberal principle, and so pledge
their capital for the fulfilment of a bargain which common sense
declares, and experience proves, to be preposterous. The necessary
consequence will be, that the rent must be paid out of capital,
a process which cannot last long; and the unhappy speculator, as
he finds his earnings disappearing, will curse the hour when he
yielded to the delusion, that high farming must be profitable in
spite of the variations of price. The poor seamstress, who weekly
turns out of hand her augmented number of improved shirts--and who
lately, though on exceedingly erroneous principles, has found a
warm advocate in the kind-hearted Mr Sydney Herbert--has, in her
own way, tested the value of the experiment. There is more cotton
to be shaped, and more work to be done, but the prices continue to
fall. She makes two additional shirts, but she receives nothing for
the additional labour, because the remuneration for each is beaten
down. The free-trade tariffs are the cause of her distress, but the
unfortunate creature is not learned in statistics, and therefore
does not understand the source of her present misery. No more,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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