land-not only waste land, but land which is of a description not the most susceptible of cultivation. The careful preparation of manure, the most remarkable feature in Chinese husbandry, is the grand resource; and the result is far from discouraging. We shall not give the details; but the following are the sums of produce and expenditure for one year:

The desire of gain and the approbation of the superintendents are, in general, found to be sufficient stimuli both to industry and good conduct. When these are not enough, forfeiture of privileges, confinement, and hard labour are resorted to. There are also badges of honour-medals of copper, silver and gold. Those who have the copper medal may leave the colony on Sundays without asking leave; the silver is given to those who have made some savings, and they are allowed to go beyond the colony in the intervals of labour on working days; and when they are entitled to the gold medal, by having shewn that they clear 201. 16s. 8d. a-year by their labour, they are free tenants, and released from all the regulations of the colony. These privileges may, however, be suspended for offences.

In the course of seven years, from its first establishment, the colony of Frederick's Oord, contained a population of 6778, including that of Omme Schanze, under a more rigid control, and among the number were 2174 orphans and foundlings. The total number forming all the colonies in Holland were stated to Mr. Jacob at 20,000, but he thinks it exaggerated: there were, however, 8000 in North Holland. Every attention is paid to the education of the young; and, in a country which has been always remarkable for its good sense in matters of religious opinion, and which, like Ireland, is, now that Flanders has been added to Holland, made up of Catholics and Protestants, it has, as Mr. Jacob remarks, "been deemed wise to keep education apart from spiritual tuition," a wisdom which, if ever Ireland shall be blessed by the establishment of similar colonies, could not be too implicitly followed.

And there are five millions of acres in Ireland, each of which is just as capable of supporting its human beings, and in sixteen years repaying the expense of putting them there, as those upon the wilderness of sand, peat, and heather, at Frederick's Oord in Holland. Indeed they are a great deal more so; for very many of the Irish acres are of a quality capable of yielding a good crop without any previous manure; and few or none of them need be devoted to so poor a grain-crop as rye-the only one which the Dutch colonists appear yet to have cultivated to advantage. Ireland, too, has greatly the superiority in climate-in every natural advantage. And there can be no doubt that the labouring Irish would work hard enough if they were once put under proper regulation.

Here then are means of relief at hand, sufficiently ample to employ the whole of what is very improperly called the surplus population of Ireland (there can be no surplus population where there are five mil

lion acres, out of about twenty that might be cultivated, but are not); and this is a relief which does not rest upon theory, but of which we have as clear a practical demonstration as can be obtained on any subject.

Nor need the advantage be confined to Ireland. There are, according to the statement already quoted, four millions of acres in England and Wales that might be cultivated to advantage, and six millions of the same description in Scotland; so that, in the whole island of Britain, there are ten millions of available acres, and fifteen millions in the entire kingdom. With this fact on the one hand, and the successful experiment of the Dutch on the other, we speak, and write, and legislate about an excessive population, and send the people all over the world, at double the expense which, in colonies similar to those of Holland, would make them independent at home.

The people of Scotland might be, perhaps, left to manage matters as they please, because there, so far as we know, the able-bodied have not yet sent in a formal claim for charity. But really, if there were such colonies in England, the advantages would be immense, both in saving to the public and in preserving the habits of the working classes. The amount of the poor-rate might then be diminished by more than one-half; and all the advantages of it might be secured without any of the evils. If those who were able to work and could not find employment were sent to the colony, the parish would be relieved of the burden of all save the really necessitous; and the probability is that the number who cannot now find work would thereby be greatly diminished; the large sums now annually spent in litigation, or in wheeling and countermarching paupers over the country, would be entirely saved, as the parties who are passed to their parishes are generally able to work, and could be sent to the colony without

any expense.

Even culprits might be employed at a profit to the public, as the delinquents are in many of the Dutch establishments, instead of idly treading the winds as they are now made to do at our tread-mills. On the subject of labour, some of our countrymen appear to have the most singular notions that ever entered into human heads. If we do not actually believe that men live upon labour and not upon food, we act as if that were our belief-which comes nearly to the same thing. That we may not injure the honest labourer, we direct that the labour of those whom we sentence to it as a punishment shall be of no profit ; and we take the price of their maintenance and of the machinery that they waste in their idle drudgery out of the pockets of those who do labour; whereas, if we made the culprits do anything useful, the whole that they did would be, as compared with our system, a clear gain.

If we had such colonies as a resource to meet the contingencies of those who were able to work, and our poor-rate freed from the customary litigation and jobbing, our system of provision for the helpless and the unfortunate would be very nearly perfect; and if we could bring about both for Ireland, we should do more for her than if we were to spend a thousand years in political legislation. We hope that the society, to which we have alluded, will go on vigorously; they who would in any way thwart or retard their progress are not the friends either of Ireland or of England.

THE LATE HARVEST.

THE result of the last harvest is a question of paramount importance at the present moment; and that the people of England should be rightly informed upon it is, we think, at once an act of justice and policy: we have so viewed this question, and we have proceeded in our investigation with an anxious desire to state the whole case to them. But, while we conceal no fact within our knowledge, we shall not indulge in conjectures that are calculated to excite undue alarm. In an examination of this description, it will be recollected that the period in which we are writing is an early one for making accurate calculations regarding the condition of the crops, because the corn is not generally threshed; but as portions of it have undergone that operation in every county, and as our researches have extended thus far, we deem ourselves fully competent now to enter upon a subject creating such intense public anxiety. We have received communications from every part of the kingdom as to the productiveness of the corn already threshed, and that, we think, is a fair sample for our purpose, which is to give a general result without attempting minute details. This is the time also, when a statement like the present can be practically useful, by infusing caution in the consumption without producing an excess of apprehension; for, at all events, whatever danger there may be as to a serious scarcity of corn, the period is comparatively distant at which it will be severely felt.

For the purpose of simplifying the details that we have gone into for enabling us to form a judgment as to the quantity of wheat that will be wanting, by reason of the failure of the last harvest, we will take the amount required for the consumption of England at twelve millions of quarters. It may be a little more; certainly, we think not less, but we have no doubt this amount is sufficiently accurate for the object we have in view. Two millions of quarters are required for seed, out of this quantity, leaving the demand for human consumption at ten millions of quarters, or eighty millions of bushels. The north of England is an exception to the general state of the crops, inasmuch as the harvest there has been favourable; therefore, we shall refer to that district presently, when we notice Scotland and Ireland, which present circumstances of a more favourable nature than those which we must previously attend to. It is remarkable, taken as a whole, that the deficiency does not vary in amount in different counties. In some instances it does vary materially, but they must be considered rather as exceptions to a general rule; for out of all the English counties, the northern ones excepted, we do not find above six in which we think the deficiency may not be taken at about one-fifth of a fair average crop, according to the most careful calculations that we can make. Some persons who have been instituting enquiries upon this subject make the deficiency as high as one-third; a great many more put it at one-fourth, among whom are some of the best-informed farmers; but upon the information that we have received from every county in the kingdom, we cannot make it average above one-fifth. It must be remembered, that there is great difficulty in separating NOVEMBER, 1828. 2 G

enquiries of this nature from self-interested motives, and we have no doubt that the highest calculation is strongly tainted with them. We have made due allowance for exaggerated statements from those parties upon whom we could not place implicit reliance. In a very few instances we have been obliged to receive the reports of such parties without getting their statements confirmed by those in whom we could confide. The counties that are exceptions to our calculation of one-fifth, are Wiltshire, Berkshire, Hampshire, Kent, Worcestershire, and Lincolnshire. Wiltshire appears to have suffered very extensively by reason of the inauspicious season; and the impatience of the farmers there to house their corn greatly aggravated the evil. Indeed this impatience (a very natural weakness, we will allow) has grievously increased the evil in every county; but particularly in those where the weather has been most unfavourable for in proportion to the untoward state of the weather has the anxiety to house the crop been apparent. In this county, we think, the deficiency cannot be rated at less than one-third.

The difference in Kent, with reference to the high and low lands in that county, is extraordinary. In the fine dry soil, the crop, had it not been for the impatience of farmers, would have been a fair one; as it was, its deficiency did not exceed one-eighth whilst in the low lands, in the neighbourhood of Faversham and in the district adjoining the river, as well as toward the Romney Marshes, the wheat was scarcely worth reaping in many instances, and did not yield above the half of an average crop. In Worcestershire, the harvest for the most part was favourable, and from the calculations we have seen respecting this county, we should state the loss to be about one-eighth.

The low lands of Lincolnshire, in the consideration of which we must include a small portion of Cambridgeshire, aggravated to a large extent the deficiency in the former county, and, although not in the same proportion, that of the latter. The distinction between the two counties was this the harvest in Lincolnshire was generally bad, and the fenny district grievously increased the aggregate loss to the farmers in this county, reducing their amount of wheat to one half its usual quantity. In Cambridgeshire, on the contrary, in the drier parts of the county, the corn was fair both in quantity and quality: these two circumstances balanced the average for Cambridgeshire at about one-fourth.

In Berkshire and Hampshire the crops suffered severely, and the farmers were particularly unfortunate in housing their corn. These counties have been especially noticed as regards their harvest this year. We have seen a variety of loose communications from them, all tending to shew the distressing diminution there would be in this district from an average crop; and therefore we entered upon our enquiries in it with great caution, and we certainly find that the most moderately computed loss upon the crop this year, as compared with an average one, rather exceeds one-third in the above counties. The exceptions that we have noticed, however, are very limited, and not sufficient to militate against the uniformity of the deficiency, inasmuch as the fluctuations in the excepted districts bring it, in some instances, above, and, in others, below the scale.

Before we enter further upon that part of the question that imme

diately belongs to consumption in the common acceptation of the term, we will diverge for a moment to notice the augmentation of the evil caused by the demand for seed-corn, amounting, as we have before stated, to two millions of quarters. This is not taken into account

by the public generally; and few of those who calculate upon it, see the pressure of the demand to its full extent. The other branch of consumption may be diminished by prudence. Rice, potatoes, and other articles, are good substitutes, in cases of necessity, for wheat; but for the purpose of sowing, an uncompromising demand of two millions of quarters of the best grain is required, which cannot be reduced by any forethought, and which will admit of no substitute. The crop that averages two quarters to an acre must equally give its two millions of quarters for seed as that which produces in another year three quarters to an acre. It is difficult at present to see how the consumption for food is to be supplied, but that for seed materially increases the embarrassment.

Upon the most moderate calculation, we fear that the deficiency in measure (we use the term in contradistinction to another deficit that we shall immediately have to notice) cannot be placed lower than at two millions of quarters; for it must be recollected that, in taking it at one-fifth, we have reduced it to the utmost limits that our information will admit of; and the balance of difference produced by the excepted counties has a tendency to increase it, because the greater proportion of their crops is over, rather than under, our scale. To this loss in measure must be added a loss in weight, inasmuch as the wheat of the present year does not produce the average weight when reduced to flour. This deficit that arises between the measure of wheat and weight of flour amounts, we apprehend, to 300,000 quarters. It varies of course, some grain yielding more, some less; but the whole will make up that sum, leaving a total diminution from an average crop of 2,300,000 quarters—an amount that was never imported in any one year. To this general remark as regards importation, there are facts to be added which we fear will tend to narrow materially arrivals of wheat from the continent. And first, an increased quantity of land is every year put out of tillage in Poland, and other parts of the continent, in consequence of the English market being virtually closed against its produce. Secondly, the harvest has been for the most part a short one on the other side of the Channel, particularly in France; which country has drained the corn markets around her, as she has been importing foreign corn at a duty of four shillings per quarter. From this and other causes, Dantzic and the great depôts of grain are by no means well supplied. In the last place, the Russian and Turkish war will probably increase the difficulties of this country in the way of obtaining corn. The blockade of the Dardanelles will send the Turks to markets where, as purchasers of wheat, they will more directly come in contact with us than they would at Odessa, where they now cannot go, and which formerly was the place from which they largely supplied themselves; and the demand for wheat will be considerably increased in the East of Europe by reason of the military operations. Any attempt to form a calculation as to the quantity of wheat in the hands of the English farmers would be futile; but from the best in