The investment of small savings in land with a view to spade-husbandry, was a few years ago brought prominently before the working-classes. We took occasion, at the time, to warn the humbler classes generally against projects of this kind, but without any beneficial effect. Land-schemes, as they were called, were puffed into popularity, and all our advices and remonstrances on the subject were rejected with disdain. Universal ruin has followed these schemes, and the unfortunate dupes are left to mourn their loss. Nothing is more specious than a plan of earning an independent livelihood by cultivating a few acres of land; but, practically, it is open to some serious drawbacks. First, the cultivator requires to be skilled in husbandry, and of a bodily frame to endure the fatigue of constant out-door labour. Second, his land must be tolerably good, and situated under a good climate. Third, the land must be close to a market, otherwise the produce cannot be disposed of. The cultivation of a small bit of land is in reality a kind of gardening. No horse-labour can be employed; all is to be done by the spade. It may be possible, therefore, to make a livelihood near a large town, where anything that is produced--milk and butter included--will find a ready market at no cost of transport; but in other circumstances the thing is almost hopeless. It is a notorious fact, that the most wretched of the rural population of this country are small cultivators, even if the land costs next to nothing. We are aware that the small-farm system is more successful in Belgium and Lombardy. On the reasons for this, it is here needless to enter. We take the examples offered in Great Britain, where it has never come up to the expectations of philanthropists.