But they bring up their sons to be clerks and such “skimmy-dish things” in towns. Ay, there is the rub; and this we owe to the rage for large rentals inspired by the war prices; by false notions of improvement generated during the heyday of farming prosperity; by gentlemen making stewards of lawyers, who have no real knowledge of farming interests, and can, therefore, have no sympathies with the small farmer, or patience with him in the day of his difficulty, and whose only object is to get the greatest rent at the easiest rate. But above all, this we owe to the detestable doctrine of political economy, by which a dozen of moderate farms are swallowed up in one overgrown one,--a desert, from which both small farmers and labourers were compelled to depart, to make way for machinery, and Irish labourers at fourpence a day. Where were the farmers to put their sons when they were brought up? The small farms, the natural resource for divided capitals and commencements in agricultural life, were, in a great measure, annihilated; and a most useful race of men as far as possible rooted out. Thank God! this abomination and worse than Egyptian plague, is now seen through, and what is better, is _felt_. We shall yet have farms from fifty to a hundred acres, where men of small capital may try their fortunes, and have a chance of mounting up, instead of being thrust down into the hopeless condition of serfs. We may have humble homesteads, where a father and his sons may work together; where labour may await their days, and an independent fireside their hours of rest. Where a lowly, but a happy people may congregate at Christmas and other festivals, and the old games of blindman’s-buff, turn-trencher, and forfeits, may long be pursued in the evening firelight of rustic rooms. The farmer has had his ups and downs. During the war he was too prosperous; since then he has been at times ground to the dust by low prices and high rents. Heaven send him a better day! We would see him as he is, in a healthy state of the country,--a rural king, sowing his corn and reaping his harvest with a glad heart, and amid the rejoicings of a numerous peasantry. Of the great advance in the science of farming; of the various improved modes of management, and ingenious machines invented for facilitating the farmer’s labours, I have spoken under the head of the country gentleman’s pursuits and recreations. One or two other observations on the farmer and his life, may as well be given here.