but less delicate prints, would form a work of a highly popular kind, and deserve and obtain a circulation hardly inferior to that of the best romances of the time. This book, if produced in a cheap set of duodecimos, would form in itself a library, both of useful' and of entertaining knowledge.' When Goldsmith boasted of having seen a splendid copy of his poems in the cabinet of some great lord, saying emphatically This is fame, Dr. Johnson,' the doctor told him that, for his part, he would have been more disposed to self-gratulation had he discovered any of the progeny of his mind thumbed and tattered in the cabin of a peasant.

ART. V.-1. Observations on the Cultivation of Poor Soils, as exemplified in the Colonies, for the Indigent, and for Orphans in Holland. By William Jacob, Esq. Svo. London. 1828. 2. An Account of the Poor Colonies of Holland. By a Member of the Highland Society. 8vo. Edinburgh. 1828.

S. De la Colonie de Fredericks-oord. Par le Baron de Keverberg. 8vo. Gand. 1821.

4. First, second, third, and fourth Report of the Commissioners appointed to Inquire into the Nature and Extent of the several Bogs in Ireland, and the Practicability of Draining and Cultivating them. By Order of the House of Commons. 1814. 5. A Letter to the Duke of Wellington. By an Englishman. Svo. London. 1828.

MANY persons seem to regard the extended, and still extend

ing, use of machinery in this country, with feelings of apprehension, if not of dismay. They consider the substitution of machines for human labour, either in the cultivation of the soil, or in the fabrication of wrought commodities-of the plough for the spade, of the spinning-jenny for the wheel and distaff, as an evil, unavoidable indeed, but still an evil. Commiserating the sufferings which the manufacturing population occasionally experience from the introduction of machinery, they propose that a direct tax should be imposed upon machines, adequate, if not to put them down entirely, at least to check their future increase ;nor, if we really believed the use of machinery to be calculated to injure the interests, abridge the comforts, or abstract from the happiness of any class of the community, do we well see how we could refuse acceding to this recommendation. But we entertain no such belief. So far are we from regarding the increased use of machinery as an evil which requires to be checked, that we hail every such application of the discoveries of science as another step in the steady course by which the benevolent Author of Nature

pushes

In our opi

pushes forward the improvement of the human race. nion, instead of being an evil to be deprecated, and, if possible, counteracted and repressed, the application of machinery, as a substitute for labour, serves to disengage a large number of human beings from manufacturing toil, in order that they may be employed in perfecting and extending our tillage; thereby increasing at once their own happiness and the resources of the empire.

We have arrived at a great and most important crisis of social arrangement. We are embarrassed with a superfluity of human labour-of animal machines, which cannot be absorbed in manufacturing operations. What is to be done with this superfluous or rather disposable fund of physical power: shall these men be compelled to eke out a miserable existence, with half employment and scanty wages? or shall they be thrown upon their respective parishes for eleemosynary relief?

To us it does not appear necessary that they should be exposed to either alternative. We would rescue them from the misery of subsisting upon an inadequate supply of food, or the degradation of eating, what they do not ask for, the bread of idleness. Employment should be given them: a field should be opened, in which, by the application of industry, they might be enabled to raise for themselves an abundant supply of the necessaries and conveniences of life. But where is this field? The manufactures of the country are, on all hands, acknowledged to be full, even to overflowing: the population of the agricultural districts is said to be excessive. What is the remedy? Emigration-emigration to the uncultivated wastes and unreclaimed bogs of Great Britain and Ireland. This is the species of emigration which we think it necessary at present to advocate. Here is an inexhausted fieldhere Nature offers us, at our own doors, a mine of wealth which, if properly worked, would furnish profitable employment for millions. To the people of this country we, therefore, say if your limits have become too narrow, the remedy is in your own hands; enlarge your borders: you allege that the population has increased beyond the demand for labour; throw open to this excess your wastes and commons: you are now compelled to subsist a surplus population, in a state of unproductive idleness; remove them from the places which they encumber, and settle them on districts where they will not only support themselves by their own industry, but likewise prove a source of new and vast revenue to the state.

It is the manifest intention of the Author of Nature that the whole surface of the earth should, in the end, become occupied and tilled. But this process of cultivation can only proceed by slow and gradual steps. The population must swell into a suffi

cient number to consume the produce of the land already raised by skill and industry to a high pitch of productiveness, before it becomes either necessary or expedient to undertake the cultivation of new land. Nature herself slowly but certainly ameliorates the -wastes of every country, and prepares them, by the time they are wanted, for the operations of husbandry. Her activity never sleeps. She is ever, with unremitting energy, preparing the room required for the habitation of her multiplying sons. The line of fertility is never a fixed and immovable barrier-on the contrary, it is in every country constantly receiving a gradual extension. Enormous tracts of waste lands, which many centuries ago appeared barren and unfit for tillage, have been since reclaimed and rendered highly productive; they received a gradual accession of fertility from the hand of nature-the decomposition of even the smallest plants, carried on through a long succession of years, formed at length a vegetable mould of sufficient thickness to lay the basis of a profitable system of tillage, and to allure the ope rations of the husbandman. And other wastes, which at the present moment appear hopelessly barren, or at least not sufficiently prepared by nature for the enterprise of the farmer, will hereafter form a field on which his industry may be exerted with profit both to himself and the community. These considerations remove from our minds all the alarm which some persons feel on account of the increase of population: so far are we from considering this increase an evil, that we look upon it as the wise and efficient means which the Author of Nature adopts, in order to force man to take possession of the territory which He has with so much benevolence and assiduity prepared for his habi

tation.

It is, we know, assumed by those who overlook the silent operation of the natural causes to which we have just adverted, no less than the history of tillage in this country, that the present -unproductive state of our wastes and commons furnishes a conclusive proof that they are not capable of being reclaimed, except at an expense of food and labour greatly exceeding any return which could be anticipated. It is argued that the waste lands remain uncultivated because they are barren-because their cultivation would not yield an adequate return for the outlay required for their tillage. We cannot accede to this opinion; we contend, on the contrary, that every division of the British dominions contains extensive and valuable tracts of waste lands which are not naturally barren-which, in their present state, are comparatively unproductive because they are not tilled; which require nothing but tillage to render them productive, and would make an adequate return for any outlay which a judicious and industrious occupier might find

it necessary to expend in reclaiming and cultivating them. The various gradations of fertility and productiveness which different soils now exhibit, depend much more upon the length of the periods during which they have been cultivated, and upon the skill and industry with which their tillage has been conducted, than upon any peculiar properties inherent in their nature. Á vast proportion of the land now cultivated in this country, was originally in no respect better than a very considerable proportion of the wastes and commons which remain to this day neglected and unreclaimed. It has been brought to its present state of productiveness by the long-continued industry of man; and the same perseverance which succeeded in fertilizing the inclosures of this country would produce a similar result on the wastes which abut upon them. If man will but labour the earth, and open its bosom, the atmosphere will deposit therein an increased supply of the fertilizing principles with which it is abundantly charged: these aërial deposits being the true food of plants, will yield an ample return for the labour bestowed by man on the cultivation of the soil.

It is, indeed, an interesting task to trace the slow and almost imperceptible steps by which cultivation has been pushed over extensive districts, which now yield an ample produce, but which in their unreclaimed state were wholly unproductive. On a barren waste first arose a baronial or monastic mansion; around this feudal or religious residence a few straggling huts sprung up; to these a few enclosed crofts and curtilages were gradually attached. The stock of cattle which these were capable of supporting were in the day-time permitted to roam at pleasure over the surrounding wastes; at night they returned to the enclosures, which they manured and fertilized. Over these enclosures the cottier also spread the sod or vegetable mould, which he frequently peeled from the surface of the waste. When the population of the village increased in number, and required more room, the limits of the enclosures were pushed outwards, and a new encroachment was committed on the waste. An additional hut was built-a new family was added to the community-the Baron or the Abbot acquired a new dependant. The occupier of every new hut became the reclaimer and cultivator of an additional croft. was mostly effected by manual labour; encumbered with stones or the stumps of trees, the waste offered no scope for the use of the plough; and even when the soil was free from these impediments the poverty of the cultivator precluded the employment of this implement.

This

In this manner the centre of every manor or parish became an aggregation of cottages, having small curtilages attached to each

of

of them; together with the right of depasturing cattle in the neighbouring wastes.

6

'Every man,' says Mr. Jacob, who has been far from home, must have observed, on every barren heath, some spots surrounding cottages which exhibit marks of productiveness, forming a striking contrast with the sterility that surrounds them. If inquiry has been made, it has been found that, at one period, all was alike barren,-that the difference has been created solely by the application of human labour. If the inquiry be pursued, and the history of the process be studied, it will be commonly found, that the labour which has achieved this amelioration has been principally that, which would have been either lost to the community or applied to its injury.'-Observations on Poor Soils, p. 4.

This system contributed towards fertilizing these enclosures, not only by the tillage and manure which the cottier laid out upon them, but in another way which deserves to be mentioned. These crofts and curtilages were necessarily of very limited dimensions, and consequently the ditches, banks, and hedges which surrounded them were of much greater length than those of larger enclosures. Every person, at all conversant with rural economy, is well aware how rapidly the mould formed at the bottom of ditches, and on the sides of hedge-rows, increases both in depth and fertility. The atmosphere is constantly charged with impalpable particles of sand-with the decomposed elements of vegetable and animal matter, in a volatile or gaseous form-with seeds of plants too minute to be perceived by the naked eye; the ditches and banks form true skreens or barriers, which intercept these. fertilizing materials thus constantly floating in the air-they arrest their further progress, cause them to fall down and settle-the trees composing the hedge-rows attract the moisture of the atmosphere, which then descends upon the fertilizing particles which the banks and ditches had arrested. Hence the sides of banks and ditches facing the wind which most generally prevails during the dry season of summer and autumn, when the earthy and vegetable particles suspended in the atmosphere are most easily conveyed from one place to another, are always found to be embellished with a variety of plants, possessing more than usual vigour.

So well known, indeed, in past times, was this influence of enclosures upon the fertility of the soil that, in upland parts, they were frequently formed for this sole purpose. In many of the open districts of Scotland, for instance, it was (perhaps in some it still is) the regular practice to enclose small crofts by mounds and banks of earth; and to accommodate the cultivators of these curtilages, huts were constructed, having their sides composed of the same materials, and thatched with a covering of straw, rushes, or dried ferns. In the course of years, these raised banks,

as