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158 fiMfirt f %Ltat!tX* [Saturday,
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MERIVALK'S ROMAN EMPIRE. A Uisiory of th...
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Laing On European Social Life. Observati...
does not suggest thought . Mr . Laing has a truly British , mind . We mean this as a comp liment , for if he has the strong feelings and prejudices of the Briton , he has also the sagacity , practical energy , and sound sense which distinguish the Anglo-Saxon . His love of art is infinitely small ; his love of solid comfort and practical liberty infinitely great . As a
survey of life we deem his philosophy miserably imperfec , for it excludes that potent and more elevated portion of man ' s life which expresses itself through Imagination and Sympathy , and of which Art is but the beautiful symbol . Within his own limits , however , he is admirable ; and with this slight indication of our protest against his philosophy , we will accompany him in his new travels .
All Europe , he distinctly notes , is steadily advancing towards one goal—a higher social and . political condition—one more suitable to the present century than that condition into which feudalism settled in the 18 th . Every country is throwing off the slough of ignorance and miegovernment . Into some of the fundamental agencies Mr . Laing proposes to inquire . He does it with spirit , with knowledge , and with decided views . The result is to glorify England as
blessed above all other nations in liberty and wellbeing . France and Germany are assaulted on every side , and shown to have within them the seeds of endless trouble , endless revolution . The main topics he discusses are the Division of Land and systems of large and small farming , the system of bureaucracy , the Landwher and standing armies , and Education ; and singular is the interest he throws into these much-debated topics , by the raciness of his observations and the distinctness of his views . A book
more rich in extractable matter we have not met with , and we shall elsewhere make up for the sparingness of our extracts in this notice by a liberal quotation of short paragraphs . Comparing the countries wherein large and small farming are practised—especially Flanders and Scotlaud—he gives unequivocal preference to small farming . He fehows how by peasant proprietors the land is better cultivated , the soil greatly improved and the produce larger ; how not only are the people better sustained by the land , but how little land is left waste : —
" Where land , whether it be a single farm , a district , or a whole country , has not merel y to produce food , fuel , clothing , lodging , in short , subsistence in a civilised way , to those employed on it , but also a rent to great proprietors , and a profit to large farmers , the tenants of the landowners , it is evident that only the land of the richest quality can be let for cultivation , and can afford employment What cannot afford rent to the landlord } and profit to the tenant , as well as a subsistence to the labourer , cannot be taken into cultivation at all , until the better sort of land becomes so scarce that the
inferior must be resorted to , and , from the scarcity and consequent dearness of the better , can afford a rent and profit also- This appears to be the glimmering of meaning in the foggy theory of rent given us by our great political economists . They forget that God Almighty did not create the land for the purpose of paying rents to country gentlemen , and profits to gentlemenfarmers , but to subsist mankind by their labour upon it ; and that a very large proportion of the land of this world , which never could be made to feed the labourers on it , and to yield besides a surplus of produce affording rent and profits to another class , could very well subsist the labourers , and in a comfortable civilised way too , if
that were all it had to do . It could produce to them food , fuel , clothing , lodging , or value equivalent to these requirements of a civilised subsistence , but could not produce a surplus for rent , and profit over and above their own civilised subsistence . The labour applied to such land is not thrown away , or unreproductive ; it is adding every year to national wealth and well-being , although not producing rent and profits , because it is gradually fertilising the soil of the country , is feeding the population of small landowners working upon it , and supporting them in a civilised and assured mode of subsistence , which is gradually improving with the improvement of the soil . "
Having exhibited the various economical and social advantages of peasant proprietorship—how the peasant proprietor is raised in the social scale morally as ¦ well as physically—and how this increase of comfort and elevation of standard acts as a * ' preventive chock" on overpopulation—he proceeds to demolish the astounding " humbug" of Scotch farming so patronized by political economists and landlords . His
a ' . t ; icks tiro direct , cogent , and convincing . Mastery of tin ? subject , nnd consequent distinctness of views in ; : lu ? . ill he says licre extremely valuable . lie has wiiitcn its condemnation in this sentence , "To ecoinju . i (• labour is the main object of by far the greater j . irt of what is culled agricultural improvement' in "Holland . . But in this kind of improvement national > vculth and well-being have no part , intrivst , or
benefit whatsoever , unless the labour economised can be beneficially employed in some other branch of industry . " And he shows that it cannot—that the economised labour is turned into the streets to starve and to " glut" the labour market . Then observe : — " Scotland has now enjoyed , for more than half a centurythis improving process ; and what is called the
, Scotch system of land-letting and farming has extended over the whole country . What has been the improvement , physical or moral , in the condition of the great mass of her population ? Rents of land , it is true , have doubled , trebled , quadrupled ; and the agricultural population being driven into the towns , —Glasgow , Edinburgh , Paisley , Greenock , Dundee , Aberdeen , —have doubled , trebled , quadrupled . The aggregate population of these six towns alone has risen , since 1801 , from
262 , 274 souls , to 665 , 967 in 1841 . Are not these towns great social execrescences in a country with only 2 , 620 , 000 inhabitants ? In 1841 it was reckoned that there were only 141 , 243 families employed , in agriculture , which at four and a half persons for each family , would amount to an agricultural population , in all Scotland , of 636 , 093 persons , or pomewhat less than the population of six of her towns . Is this a sound and wholesome distribution of employment and population in a country ? Is it from want of land that so few families are subsisted by agricultural employment ? The total area of Scotland is estimated at 20 , 586 , 880 acres , of which 9 , 039 , 930 are
considered not susceptible of cultivation , being lakes , mountain-tops , rocks , & c . ; and of the remaining 11 , 546 , 950 acres , , 5 , 485 , 000 acres are cultivated , and 6 , 061 , 950 acres are uncultivated , the latter , however , yielding rent and profit , as sheep-farms , shootinggrounds , or deer-preserves , although not yielding employment and subsistence , as in firmer times , when the Highlands were a peopled country . There appears to be but one family em ployed in Scotland on every eightytwo acres of the land capable of cultivation , and only one employed for every thirty-nine acres of the actually cultivated land . The great question here belongs to a higher science than political economy—to social philosophy . It is not whether more or better agricultural produce is sent to market by the one system than by the
other , but whether it be abetter social arrangement for the permanent well-being of a nation , that six hundred thousand only , of a population of two millions and a half , should be employed on the cultivation of the land of a country , and the rest of the mass of its working population be dependent , for the means to buy subsistence , on the manufacture and sale of cotton , iron , and other goods for distant , foreign , and uncertain markets ; or whether it would be a better arrangement of society , that the land of the county should employ and subsist the mass of its inhabitants , and only the smaller proportion be altogether dependent for employment and food on the sale , in the foreign or even in the home market , of the products of their work . "
He winds up the chapter with this pithy but socialist sentiment— " It is not that a duke has £ 50 , 000 a-year , but that a thousand fathers of families have £ 50 a-year , that is true national wealth and wellbeing . " Surely , Mr . Laing , this is , if you consider it , a very shocking sentiment ! What is to become of an aristocracy if no one has £ 50 , 000 a-year ? and without a landed aristocracy what is a nation ?
Fathers of families indeed ! Worthy men , no doubt , in their way ; loyal men ; tax-paying men ; churchgoing men ; but what are thousands of these " oxen " compared with one " lion ? " Mr . Laing , you have cut away the ground from under jour own feet by such a sentence ! Aristocratic England will tell you how absurd it is to place the well-being of a nation in fathers of families , unless those fathers are upholders of the " great landed interest . "
Connected with the small-farm system there is supposed to be a natural tendency to overpopulation ; and as illustrated by Ireland the case seems made out . A more extensive generalization , however , shows that it is to other causes than that of " small holdings " Ireland owes its surplus population . Indeed , this question of Population is still involved in perplexity . Multhus seemed to have settled it ;—John Mill , in his Political Economy , makes it turn up at every winding , so that his two volumes seem an endless iteration of the one command , — " Do not
multiply . " In vain ! the theory contradicts our moral sense ; outrages our strongest instincts ; it is a social blasphemy . It must bo wrong , though the fallacy may escape detection for the present . Mr . Luing attacks the theory in a new way . Of its supporters he says : " They do not bring the two things they are comparing —the increase of population , and the increase of food , in a given period—to a common term They do not take the increase of population ( for example , and to oxtilain
my meaning ) in one year , which at its most rapid rate , and when it is doubling itself every twenty years , is but five per cent of increase each year , —and compare that with the increase of subsistence from the crop of o : it » year , which , at its lowest rate of increase , that is , with the worst husbandry , seasons , and crops , will always be three returns and the seed upon an average over a whole country , or 300 percent . They take the uocMunula'ion of population in twenty years , and compare that with the increase of one year ' s crop above the amount of the
preceding year ' s crop—of the twentieth year ' s crop above the nineteenth year ' s crop only . The two things to be compared—the progress of the production of subsistence and that of the production of population—ar e not reduced here to a common term of twenty years , but only one of the two things is brought to that term . To state the question accurately , we should , I conceive , take an unit of population increasing at its most rapid rate , that is doubling itself every twenty years . This average unit becomes two in twenty years ; there are two units to subsist where there was but one , twenty years before . This is the amount of the accumulation of population at the end of this period ; and it is represented by this unit
Now , suppose this representative unit consumes each year five quarters of grain , and that this quantity , which represents the food or subsistence of this unit , was sown the first year of this series of twenty years , and each year of the twenty thereafter , and that the crops averaged three returns besides the seed and this unit ' s five quarters of yearly subsistence . The amount of this accumulation of subsistence in the course of twenty years , from the five bolls representing the unit ,,, would , in a strict and correct statement of the question , be the increase on the food side of it , to be compared with the increase of population from the unit in the same space of twenty years on the population side of it . The increase of population , the is
in the series or term of twenty years , one plus one . The population , or number of its units , is doubled . The increase of subsistence from the five quarters of grain , representing this unit on the food side of the question , would , at the end of the series of twenty years , be some trifle more than twenty-six thousand one hundred and fifty millions of quarters of grain , after deducting yearly the five quarters for the unit ' s subsistence , and the seed for each crop . But grain is perishable . Land and labour cannot be applied to the production of more of the perishable articles of subsistence than what can be required for consumption before a new crop gives a new supply . True . But the question is not whether grain , and oth' -r articles of human food , be perishabie , or the land capable of producing those articles be more or less scarce in any particular district or country , —but whether , as an
abstract proposition in social philosophy , it is or is not a law of nature , that population , per se , has in it an element of increase more rapid than subsistence per se . In the human food derived from the vegetable productions of the earth , in a given period of twenty years , the excess of the production of subsistence over the production of population seems almost incalculable . In America , where land is not scarce , this excess is evident , although population increases there so rapidly . In Africa , where the surplus grain of each crop is preserved , it is said , in granaries dug in the sands , —and in the cold regions in the north of ^ Europe , where , owing to the early frosts , one full crop out of seven is all that can be reckoned on , — the excess of the production of food over the production of population is proved by the snrplus of food produced from one average crop being reserved for a succession of seven years of no crops .
And subsequently he says " overpopulation is only relative to under-production consequent on artificial or conventional circumstances in the use or distribution of land . There is no natural disprojjortion between the increase of population and of food for that population independent of the fortuitous and artificial circumstances increasing the one or diminishing the other . They would be always in equilibrium with each other but for that circumstance . " We must postpone for another article the considc ration of other topics in this volume .
158 Fimfirt F %Ltat!Tx* [Saturday,
158 fiMfirt f % Ltat ! tX * [ Saturday ,
Merivalk's Roman Empire. A Uisiory Of Th...
MERIVALK ' S ROMAN EMPIRE . A Uisiory of the Jiomant under the Empire . I 5 y Clinrlcs Mcrivale , 11 . D . Late Fellow of St . John ' s Collcg- t * , Cambridge . Vols . I . and II . I . onyinan . Every one that has read the supplementary portions of Dr . Arnold's History of Home , which were reprinted after the author ' s death from the Ency denned ia
Metropolitana , must be aware how inferior they are , as regards real historic merit , to the three finished volumes to which they stand appended . We hardly know a more conspicuous example of a splendid piece of history reduced and made miserable by a wrong sentimental bias than is afforded by Dr . Arnold's sketch of the life of Julius Caesar . That the life of
this man , the greatest Roman beyond all doubt thnt ever existed , and a man , too , for whom , more easily than for any other celebrated Roman , one might learn to entertain a positive personal regard—that the life of this man should have been written as Dr . Arnold has written it , in the spirit of uniform dislike , and of uniform preference for that infinitely more dull and infinitely less likeable individual , Pompey ,
appears to us a very lamentable perversion of tl ; u true prerogative of a historian . Had Dr . Arnold lived to complete his History , he would , doubtless , have superseded his biography of Cicjsar by a composition more worthy of the subject . With his profound veneration for Niebuhr , he would , doubtless , have felt las own conception of Ctosar give way in parts before that of this great master in the art of historical discrimination . Niebuhr ' s admiration of
Cnesar , as appears from the recently-published not < > of his lectures on Romnn history , was nil but \ n \ - Lounded . As it is , Dr . Arnold ' s lucubrations on
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), May 11, 1850, page 14, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_11051850/page/14/
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