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acres of land will produce more food if held in ten farms than in one, and more in 100 farms than in ten. The reason is obvious—the quantity of food is limited by the quantity of labour. The large farmer makes his profit by limiting the application of labour to the land; the small farmer by increasing it.

There is a wonderful charm in proprietorship. We must admit that the different feelings and motives imparted by ownership, like the wand of the magician, transform deserts, into gardens. Eighty years ago, Arthur Young, who travelled on the Continent with a mind prejudiced against small estates, in the sight of the wonders achieved by ownership, exclaimed, 'The magic of property transforms sand into gold: give a man secure possession of a bleak rock, and he will turn it into a garden; give him a nine years' lease of a garden, and he will convert it into a desert.' This will be the conviction of every unprejudiced person who visits these countries.

Land is given not to produce rent, but food. A system of agriculture, which is designed, or which undesignedly, produces the result of lessening the supply of food, while it swells the rent-roll, is one diametrically opposed to the true interests of society.

Land was not created by man; it was given, not to enrich individuals, but to provide food for the people. The trust with which its possession is burthened, whether it be owned in large or small estates, is the production of food. An abuse of that trust, is sure to be followed by great social evils, amongst which, is, that class legislation which benefits a few by injuring many. To all the laws relating to the possession of land we should apply tho maxim, Salus populi, suprema lex.

been a diminution in the supply. The returns of the London markets illustrate this phase. They show that there has been a smaller supply of homefed stock in 1863 and 1864 than in 1853 and 1854. The returns are as follows:

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It is estimated that the average supply of dead meat arriving in London by rail and steam was, in 1853-54, 20,000 carcasses of beef, and 200,000 carcasses of mutton, and that in 1863-64 it had increased to 27,000 carcasses of beef, and 200,000 carcasses of mutton. The increase in cattle would make the supply of the latter period, about equal to that at the former; but there is a decrease in sheep.

The statistics of the agriculture of the United Kingdom are imperfect, but as far as I can judge, the supply of vegetable and animal food from its own soil is diminishing. The converse occurs elsewhere.

In France, there has been an increase in cereals, as well as in live stock; the supply of bread and of meat from its own soil, has increased in a greater ratio than that of population. The same result is found in Prussia, Austria, Russia, Belgium, Holland, and Switzerland, where land is held in much smaller estates than in the United Kingdom. The tendency in the United Kingdom has been to consolidate farms. The production of food diminishes in the ratio that the farms are enlarged. One thousand

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acres of land will produce more food if held in ten farms than in one, and more in 100 farms than in ten. The reason is obvious-the quantity of food is limited by the quantity of labour. The large farmer makes his profit by limiting the application of labour to the land; the small farmer by increasing it.

There is a wonderful charm in proprietorship. We must admit that the different feelings and motives imparted by ownership, like the wand of the magician, transform deserts, into gardens. Eighty years ago, Arthur Young, who travelled on the Continent with a mind prejudiced against small estates, in the sight of the wonders achieved by ownership, exclaimed, 'The magic of property transforms sand into gold: give a man secure possession of a bleak rock, and he will turn it into a garden; give him a nine years' lease of a garden, and he will convert it into a desert.' This will be the conviction of every unprejudiced person who visits these countries.

Land is given not to produce rent, but food. A system of agriculture, which is designed, or which undesignedly, produces the result of lessening the supply of food, while it swells the rent-roll, is one diametrically opposed to the true interests of society.

Land was not created by man; it was given, not to enrich individuals, but to provide food for the people. The trust with which its possession is burthened, whether it be owned in large or small estates, is the production of food. An abuse of that trust, is sure to be followed by great social evils, amongst which, is, that class legislation which benefits a few by injuring many. To all the laws relating to the possession of land we should apply tho maxim, Salus populi, suprema lex.

APPENDIX.

WHERE FAT AND FLESH COME FROM.

(From the Rural World.)

THEY come from the earth and the atmosphere, collected by vegetation. Grass contains flesh; so does grain. The animal system puts it on from these. Vegetation, then, is the medium through which the animal world exists; it can exist in no other way. When grass or grain is eaten, the flesh constituents are retained in the system; so also the fatty substance, that is, the starch and sugar, from which fat is made. Some grains have more flesh than others; so of the qualities that make fat. In a hundred parts of wheat, according to Piesse, are ten pounds of flesh; in a hundred parts of oatmeal nearly double that amount. Hence oats are far better for horses, on account of their flesh-forming principle, rather than fat, as muscle is what a horse wants For fattening purposes, however, corn and other grains are better. When flesh itself is eaten, the system but appropriates what is already formed, but would as readily take it from vegetables, from flour. The flesh-making principleor the flesh itself in its constituents-goes to form cheese in the dairy; the starch, &c., butter. Hence it is that some people assert that cream has little influence in cheese, further than to enrich it; for cheese and butter are entirely distinct. The same kind of food is equally good for the production of either. This is a point of considerable interest,

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