In the mean time, there is only the one solitary case of Auchness which you have exhibited, and on this narrow basis you build your theory, and denounce all who question its authenticity, and who, if accepted as given, deny its fitness for universal adoption. You have "plenty more," you say, but, with a relentless taciturnity, you decline to tell us where they are to be found. And thus you fancy that you have met and overthrown the agricultural statistics published by _Blackwood_ in January last. You misunderstand or misrepresent the value of these statistics. _Blackwood's_ statistics are applicable to the farming of the districts to which they severally refer, and not for one, but for the average of years of an ordinary lease, and _under existing covenants_. If they had been the literal results and experience of the reporters on their own farms, as you, with reckless inattention, persist in representing them all to be, they would have been of little value, and they never could have been attested as they have been; and, on the other hand, they would have possessed as little value had they not been drawn up from the results of their own experience and practical knowledge. They have all the force of those tabular accounts of sales which mercantile men are in the habit of transmitting to their correspondents--containing not the exact dealings of any one merchant, which would be in a great measure useless, but communicating the actual state of the existing market. The tables in _Blackwood_ were not intended to exhibit generally the highest ascertained capabilities of the best qualities of the soil, not to depict "the possible of agricultural development;" but to show how much agricultural knowledge, capital, and skill had actually accomplished on average soils, in an average of years. In this very fact consisted the value of their results: otherwise, they never could have proved the effects of Free Trade on Scottish agriculture generally. And then, the respective reports in _Blackwood_ are examined by others in the same districts. The examinators--gentlemen of known capacity and undoubted honour--having tested the reports by their own knowledge and experience, certify them as correct. We need not be surprised at the vast importance which has been attached to _Blackwood's_ statistics, and at the countless and futile attempts which have been made, by those hostile to the interests of British agriculture, to contradict and deny their accuracy. How very different is your case! You give a solitary instance of a farm farmed by the factor of the estate, under a covenant so unboundedly liberal that it leaves the tenant to do anything he pleases, if he pays a moderate, in fact, a low rent for the ground. The lease was probably drawn by the factor himself; and, if it were not, the farmer could not wish it more liberal and indulgent. The relative position of the parties throws suspicion and doubt upon the whole case. Every one feels this.