Among them we may have neighbours, my poorest tenant perhaps in prefer for's of tenants, our own fons, or different relations: to whom, if we think a moment, we should be ashamed to deny a share in the produce of the labour of their native country, in which it is poffible they themselves might have borne a share. 1 The Utility of Great Farms. SUPPOSING all farms are reduced to an equality, and all made small ones, the ground must be divided into little portions for the fupport of a miferable team, or of a few cows, or for raising small quantities of corn. No magazines could be formed against evil days; the produce of the dairy would be small, and the provifion for fodder serve for little more than to support the live stock. A few hobbets of corn would be sent to market to pay the rent; the rest might serve to maintain the family till the return of the harvest: and if the stock should be confumed before that season, how would they with for the restoring of the great farms! Many of the little farmers are also day-labourers: to whom could they apply for work, the very support of them and their families? Never has there been a famine in England fince the introduction of great farms. Unavoidable scarcities will happen, from causes inevitable. But there has not been an inftance, for numbers of centuries, of the poor running into corners to die for want of food; of their feeing their infants perish before their eyes; and perhaps a plague might ensue, the confequence of famine, to thin the land of multitudes of the miferable survivors. I speak disinterestedly, for I have not on my eftate a fingle great farmer. I find no merit in this affertio; had it been otherwise, I should have fupported him in all that was right, in common with my poorest tenant, and ence to him. I would never grant a lease to a great corn-tenant. I would preferve a power over his granary, which legiflature will not or cannot affume. Should he attempt by exportation to exhauft it, in years of scarcity, and not leave a fufficient fupply for the country which produced the grain; should he attempt a monopoly; should he refuse to carry a proper quantity to the next market; or should he refuse to fell to the poor, who cannot attend the market, corn in small quantities, I would instantly affume the power of the landlord, and expel him from my estate: a just punishment for the tenant, who, through rapacity declines to comply with my defires, excited with no other view than to promote the good of the public. The neceflity of great farms is ad mitted: but let it be remembered, that their support rests upon the labourers, who are equally requifite to the great farmer as beams are to a building. Let not the rapacity of the miscalled great man direct all his force to the support of the opulent farmer, for the sake of increased rent. He will (as sad examples prove) depopulate his country by removing the sturdy labourers to the ground of wiser landlords, and leave his own weakened by their desertion; while the fields of the former laugh and fing, but round his own, ingens erit folitudo. I could with (was it in my power) to add even to the cottages of my labourers two or three fields, that they might have the comfort of a cow, to supply their families with milk. They are too useful a class of men to be neglected: to be left to the precarious poffibility of getting any of that invigorating fluid, so neceliary for their infants, infa and even for the support of their own strength, to sustain them through their labour. Give them a 1. * A hobbet confifts of eighty-four quarts. A measure is Iralf a hobbet. A peck is half a measure. These measures are ufed in all the Flintshire markets; they extend alfo to other Welsh counties, and even Herefordshire. C dry flated cottage, with an upper floor, 'and a kind landlord, and a British la bourer need not envy Cæfar. Before I take leave of the subject, let me define the fize of a great and a small farm in this parish. Ourgreatest farm is rented at 1 Iol. per annum, at the rate of about 145. per acre. Our small farms have from twenty to ten acres; and the rent per acre from 125. to 7s. There may be in every parish instances of the exorbitant raise of rent: an evil most frequently originating in the luxury of the landlord. Our rents are moderate, because our gentry would blush to add one dith to their table at the expence of the tenant. Mr. Wedge, in his furvey of Cheshire, speaks humanely and sensibly on the affected maxim of high rents being a spur to industry." This (for I must help Mr. Wedge with a simile) resembles the practice of the prudent planter, who wishes to quicken the industry of his negroes by the invigorating application of the cartwhip to their velvet skin. MINUTES of AGRICULTURE, from the REPORT'S of the Agricultural Board: Continued from Vol. XCVIII, Page 399. CARDIGANSHIRE. By Messrs. LLOYD and TURNER. Inclosures. The greater part of the low lands is pretty well inclosed, but hilly and exposed situations are mostly open. The fize of the fields depends much on the extent of the farms. In general they are from fix to ten acres. The only tract like a common field, is an extent of a very productive barley land, reaching on the coast from Abesairon to Llanrhysted. This quarter is much intermixed, and chiefly in fmall holdings. acres. Ten years ago it was in the occupation of two, in pretty equal divifions, giving but a scanty maintenance to only two families of twelve persons. Ever since that time, it has given employment and maintenance to seven families, living on the spot, confifting (including children) of 33 persons; beside four or five labourers in the neighbourhood, who have constant employment. The fame may be faid of every other improving spot; as nothing has been attended to here more than the necessary business of a common farmer. Within the memory of a labourer, who is now but fixtythree years of age, there were only two carts in the parish; fledges were then the only carriage. They did little more than to convey fome small quantity of dung to the adjoining spots. Lime was unknown; and fea sand, the only distant manure, was carried Inclosing, without a consequent improvement, is of little advantage. When both go hand in hand, the benefit is confiderable. Population, as well as product, are much increased by it. An engrossment of farms in an improved situation, totally dependent in stock, or the dairy, may in fome measure difcourage population; in bags on horses. There are now in but in an improving district, or where much cultivation is required, the refult must be quite the contrary: at least, it has been invariably so in this country. An instance may be more to the point than reasoning; and as the particulars of my own farm are more within my own knowledge than other holdings, that are perhaps a greater object of a statement, I shall at prefent refer to it. The spot I allude to, confits of three hundred the fame parish fifty-three carts. SUSSEX. Rev. ARTHUR YOUNG. Management of Woodland. Suflex has long been celebrated for the growth of its timber, principally oak. No other county can equal it in this respect, either in quantity or quality. It overspreads the Weald in every direction, where it flourishes with a great degree of luxuriance. The foil, which * is best adapted for raising this plant, timber went out of Rye harbour to is a stiff strong loam, upon a red brick the number of thirty-seven one tide, earth or clay bottom. Large quanti- and never an English mariner among them. The whole country round this ties of beech are raised upon the chalk brought to the dockyards, than the country will be able in future permanently to fupply. The quantity now ftanding, of a fize fit for the royal navy, compared to what it has been within half a century, is inconfiderable; and as there is no regular fucceffion in referve, it must follow that the fupply will annually grow lefs. In order to form some idea what the increase in the quantity felled is now, and the proportion it bears to what it did twenty years back, the account is inferted of the export coaftwife, from one post in this county, of the total quantity of timber and bark in two periods of five years each; the first from 1763 to 1767, the other from 1788 to 1792. In other parts of the county the fame proportion prevails. 454 Load of Timber Ton Bark. 1763 to 1767 4769 1788 to 1792 19,884 2,646 A load of timber is 50 cubical feet. At a very early period of our hiftory, we find the export of this most valuable commodity to be very confiderable. In the reign of our fixth Edward, the hoys that were laden with inclined to wet; and that it excludes It is usual to cut the underwood from 4 whatsoever. Excepting chestnut, it makes the best and most durable hoppoles: it is also quartered and made into hoops for the coopers use, and the younger growth is cleaved and made into smart hoops. Young oaks, that grow scrubby, at the age of thirty or thirty-five years, are made into posts, rails, and used for repairs in general; the straight trees being left for timber. great extent in this district; the toy and hardware trade, &c. of Birmingham and its vicinity, and the ribbon and tammy trade, &c. of Coventry, and its neighbourhood, are well known. The good and bad effects which commerce and manufactures are likely to have on the agriculture of this dif trict, depend on many circumstances; but their effects have hitherto, in my opinion, been good, by furnishing ma nure, such as foot, horn-duft, maltduft, rags, soap-afhes, coal-ashes, the refuse of dyers, &c. and all the varieties of putrid manure for the im provement of land, by confuming its produce, and by giving employment to fuperfluous hands. As this subject is, in some degree, connected with the inclosure of common fields, I beg leave to fay a few words upon the subject. The time of felling oak is always ruled by the barking; when that flows, which is in April, (although - the bark this year did not run before May) the tree is felled. Bark from young trees, is in quality much fuperior to that which is peeled from older ones; it forms more sap; and there is no such waste, as the hard and dead part of an old tree is dressed, which is not the case with the younger. In a wood, well planted with timber, underwood never comes to any fize, and greater-losses are sustained by the coppice wood being damaged, than can be equalled by the advantage of the growing timber. Woods that are full of timber, have seldom any tellows in many instances, was not the cafe'; remaining; fince they are overshadowed, and find the greatest difficulty to fight their way through the branches and roots of the other trees; the ef. fect of this is, that a good succession of, young oak feldom follows a fall of old timber. Timber, from stubs, is by some people preferred, to the growth from feed; for when a good stub is cut, the fucceeding shoot springs up full three feet the first year, when an acorn will hardly make its appearance out of ground. And very fine oak timber, of two load to a tree, has been cut from stubs. Hedge-row timber is much to be preferred for moulding, and the foreft oak for plank and thick stuff, from four to ten inches in thickness.. WARWICKSHIRE. By Mr. WEDGE. Manufactures. Commerce and manufactures have been carried on to a About forty years ago, the southern and eastern parts of this county consisted mostly of open fields, which are now chiefly inclosed, at an expence. on the average, of about 45s. per acre, when frugally managed; which, and, from the best information which I can obtain, these inclosures have produced at improvement of near one third of the rents, after allowing intereft for those expences, and, in many instances, much more, upon a twenty-one year's lease. There are still about 50,000 acres of open field" land, white, in a few years, will probably be all inclosed. Many of the open fields, which have been inclosed, are converted into pafture, particularly in the fouthern and eaftern parts of the country, which are let at high rents, (from 15s. to 35s. per acre) and on which a much improved breed of catthe and sheep are kept and fattened. If the increased produce of these inclosures, and of those in the neighbouring counties, be taken into confideration, and also the advanced price of butcher's meat, it seems to prove, that either population or luxury, or perhaps both, muft, on the whole, be immenfely increased. These lands, being now grazed, want much fewer hands to manage them than they did in their former open ftate. Upon all inclosures of open fields, the farms have generally been made much larger, from these causes, the hardy yeomanry of country villages have been driven for employment into Birmingham, Coventry, and other manufacturing towns, whose flourishing trade has sometimes found them profitable employment. must depend on its fituation, as to roads, markets, and manure; and more especially those forts of manure, lime or marl, which, in the first in fiance, are most neceffary for bringing it into a speedy ftate of production, and on its being tythable or tythe-free. If, from these circumftances, converting it to woodland should be found most proper, the nature of the foil will best point out the kind of timber and underwood proper to be planted; but, however this may be, all the new hedges or fences, which are hereafter to be made, for fields, ought, in my opinion, to be abundantly planted with all the different forts of forest-trees, adapted to It may be granted, that the fewer men and horfes any given tract of land requires for its proper management, the greater will be its produce the fubdivision of waste lands or open for market; and that the supernumerary labourers, which must have been fed and employed in the cultivation of small open field, and other small farms, the nature of the foil. This I menare employed, with much more ad- tion, because it has been much negvantage to the public, in the different lected in Warwickshire, and many manufactories of this county; but if other counties; an opinion having trade in general should, for any great prevailed, that the injury done to length of time, continue bad, the hedge-rows, and to the adjoining board will be much better able to judge of the consequences than myself, and will also see how much the eace and profperity of this country depends on its trade, in the train in which things now are; and it seems fortunate, at this period, that the creation of a new kind of property gives employment to fo many thoufands of the laborious poor, I mean inland canals, by which, on the re grounds, by such_planting, is more than equal to the value of the timber that can be so raised. I have before supposed the average fize of the new inclosures that have been made in this county to be fifteen acres; if so, each close, by fencing one fide and one end, has 550 yards in length, on which timber might have been planted with the quick, &c. and if five yards and a half be allowed for two trees to be turn of peace, commerce will no doubt thus planted (which is, I think, fuf be confiderably increased, the cultivation of waste lands be promoted, and manufacturing towns flourish. We may then think ourselves happy, that Birmingham and Coventry are within this diftrict; and, on the whole, find advantageous employment for an im*mensely increased population. Waste Lands. The waste lands in this county, including the roads, I have eftimated at 120,470 acres; and, like all other lands, the urst step to be taken for their improvement is draining, where necessary. If that is effectually done, or if naturally dry, the propriety of its future use, for the purposes of agriculture or planting, ficient space for a few years, when properly pruned and trained) then each close of that fize would have 200 trees growing on its fences for fome years, which might be profitably reduced by taking out the underlings, so as to leave near too trees for timber, which, in some instances, perhaps many, would in 100 years or less, be worth the fee fimple of the land they furround, without much, if any, injury to the occupiers; because, in closes of that fize, their shelter and protection from cold winds, &c. may probably be equal to every damage done by their growth. From these, and other confiderations, it may |