In the present Volume, one sheet of this work has appeared. The reader is recommended not to bind it up THE COUNTRY GENTLEMAN'S JULY 1871 MAGAZINE SOM FARMERS V. GENTLEMEN. OME days ago, while an officer and gentleman was examined as witness in the great Tichborne case, he said that the claimant, during his service with the carabineers, spoke and wrote like a farmer, and not like an English gentleman. On crossexamination, he admitted that many English gentlemen could not come up to the mark (I quote the words used on the occasion), but were deficient in literary attainments; so far even, I must presume, as to be ignorant of the old and simple rules belonging to the magic three R's-reading, (w)riting, and (a)rithmetic. I was struck with the opinions uttered by the gallant witness, and so this morning I lay thinking how such things could be. Are farmers, as a body, deficient in literary attainments, and if so, ought they to be? On the contrary, I mean most emphatically to say that the great farming body of this country are a well-educated body. They may not have so much verbiage in constant use, but they have a sound, and in many cases, a scientific knowledge, of matters pertaining to their business, which is more than can be said of another profession-vide the debates on the Army Regulation Bill. Did you ever read poetry? If so, perhaps you may have stumbled on the following: "Yet he that is but able to express And I don't know, after all, if mere book VOL. VII. learning constitutes education. Very frequently the man whose knowledge has proceeded simply from reading, becomes a dealer in generalities. Memory may be the the only faculty ever used. Somebody, I don't know who, says something to this effect, that learning is the knowledge of that which is not generally known to others. Is this so? Then, I submit, farmers must have learning, because they have knowledge of many things which not generally known to others. To be serious, however, such a heap of twaddle there is about learning and education. What men do really understand, fits, as the Americans say, into a very little space, the rest is most frequently affectation. People in towns, as a rule, endeavour to assert a sort of superiority towards farmers and country people, but this is mere conceit, for, taking the mass of towns-people, they are by no means so good judges of character, so reflective, so self-reliant, as their despised brethren. By the way, Shakspere was an uneducated man, and hence the fresh, vivid flights of his fancy, so markedly different from the scholastic texture of Milton's utterances. Shakspere was country bred-a poacher, I believe and hence, doubtless, the healthy, unaffected tone of his dramas, a fact, by the way, not brought forward by any of the debaters in re the Game-laws. I believe it is safe to back the literature of the farming in A terest of this country against that of any other body of men, and it must not be forgotten that the literature of a body is the echo of their thoughts and sentiments. And ought not this to be? There are no men so constantly learning something new than farmers; no men so constantly alive to the kindness and yet the greatness of God; not even those who go down unto the sea in ships see greater wonders than they do, or who are more likely to be impressed thereby. Their occupation compels them to study, to reflexion, to the education of that very important portion of mankind-self, as otherwise, they of all men must signally fail in the discharge of their multifarious duties. Nor are their tasks unrewarded. The IN GAME-LAW OFFENCES. N connexion with the long talked of and much delayed legislation upon the Gamelaws, which in every probability will be still further deferred, to the annoyance of everybody, and the loss of farmers where non-preservation of ground-game is the practice, a return has been issued shewing the number of convictions under the Game-laws in separate counties of England and Wales, and also the number of convictions under the Poaching Act, during the year 1870. The grand total convicted would form a nice little army. If the same daring which poachers display was regulated by discipline, we might fall back upon convicted poachers as a splendid reserve in case of a defensive war. 10,600 is the number that was summarily convicted in England and Wales; 2103 were discharged after trial; 59 were convicted for being out armed, taking game, and assaulting gamekeepers; and 36 subjected to a similar charge, were acquitted. In all 12,798. The largest number of offenders hailed from Yorkshire, in which county 903 were found guilty of the offences charged against them, for trespassing in pursuit of game dur ing the day time, under the Game-laws; 68 under the Poaching Act; and 63 for nightpoaching and destroying game, which, with others taken up for the illegal sale of game, raised the total to 1042. Lancaster shews a total of 541, and next comes Somerset, with an aggregate of 444 cases, principally daypoaching without violence. Durham gives us 435, with four convictions for murderous assaults; Herts, 373, without any attempt at outrage; and Stafford, 340, out of which number of convictions, four were criminal. Leicester and Derby stand prominently forward for the reckless character of their poachers. In the first named county, out of a total of 307, eighteen were indicted for assault, and of these ten were convicted; in Derby, seventeen were charged with violence, but out of these, eleven managed to escape the rigour of the law. Bucks gives us 300 convicted poachers, without any attempt to do mischief to those whose duty it is to look after the preservation of the game. Chester, 356, with a like result; Devon, 343, without the keepers being attacked; Dorset, 219; Essex, 318; Gloucester, 243; Herts, 373; HIS is a free country, and a free-trade save the merchant's or agent's commission. do as he pleases, provided he obeys the laws of his country. Every one has a perfect right to buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market, and avoid intermediate profits. This is what I try to do in agriculture. I have a right to black my own boots, or be my own servant or porter. A peer or peeress has a right to load the elegant carriage with scrubbing-brushes and dust-pans, and the powdered and silk stockinged Johnny with bars of soap and bags of sugar -which I not unfrequently see when I pass through the Haymarket. It appears to me that the members of cooperative societies possess this advantage, that they can buy in such large quantities that they become wholesale purchasers, and thereby avoid the shopkeepers' profits becoming, in fact, shopkeepers themselves, employing persons to arrange and apportion the goods to them in retail quantities; they also become their own porters and clerks, making out their own bills and carrying away their own parcels, thus saving clerks' and porters' wages. They each provide their own capital, and all is done for ready money. If my farm were big enough, and I had the ready money, I should buy the 30 tons of guano from Messrs Bonar & Co., and so believe our associate themselves and divide cargoes or large bulks. All this is fair and right where it can be done, although such a system is not unattended with certain difficulties and delicate considerations. In fact, to sum up, do away with the intermediate man if he is of no use to you; sweep away the shopkeepers and intermediate men and their employés. Imagine all the shops shut up, and only a few gigantic warehouses in back streets. No more going to Regent Street to see the fashions or show there. What a saving in gas!—and how it would lighten the duties of the tax-collector and receiver of rents. What a number of ladies and gentlemen we should see with parcels under their arms. An apothecary amused me lately by describing his woes. Mr So-and-so, his customer, had just told him that he had purchased a dozen of so-and-so at the co-operative stores as cheap as the apothecary himself could have done, dividing the surplus quantity among his friends. He wanted some little matter and a little advice from the apothecary, who at once gave vent to his feelings, and in a burst of indignation referred him to the co-operative stores where he had bought by the dozen. Now, I don't believe that every shop is going to be shut up, and that every one is going to carry home his own parcel, for the mass of people, especially of the higher and well-to-do classes, have a sense of dignity and propriety and fair play which rebels against meanness and injustice. There is a very general impression that the Industrial Co-operative Act was intended for the artisan and humble classes, rather than for the rich, and I imagine that such was the intention, as they are free from income-tax and receipt stamps. Such persons think that they will tend to greater competition and reduced prices; but with certain exceptions the competition in trade is already very considerable, and many shopkeepers labour early and late to exist and pay rent and taxes. But while it is admitted that co-operative stores are perfectly justifiable, there is arising a deep and angry sentiment concerning those managed by the civil servants of the Crown; and if I mistake not, it will find vent in overwhelming numbers of petitions to our Houses of Parliament. Go where I will, I hear the plaint. They say, "Here are gentlemen highly paid from the taxes of the country, and lightly worked, becoming shopkeepers and suppliers, not only for their own class, but for the general public, and although still retaining their large official salaries, also receive considerable salaries as managers of these trading institutions." Inferences are drawn that it is impossible that they can manage these gigantic undertakings without trenching upon the public time. Some also say, that if cheapness is to be the order of the day, it must, in fair play, be carried into the civil and public service, and that their six hours a day and ten weeks' holiday in a year, should be more approximated to the hard-working and heavily-taxed trader who can scarcely spare a day's holiday from his daily drudgery of ten to fourteen. hours. With the better class of traders in rich neighbourhoods, the case is somewhat different, but the two thousand four hundred grocers, and the vast number of shopkeepers in humble but densely populated districts, who pay heavy rates and taxes, look with very evil eye on the Civil Service Co-operative Stores, and dread their extension. MR FARMERS AND FARMING. By MR L. EVERETT.* R EVERETT said he should speak first of farmers, and then of farming generally; and in speaking of farmers, the first subject for observation which presented itself was the great variety of the men that followed that occupation. He supposed that there was no other occupation followed by men which comprised within itself a larger variety of different grades of men. There had been amongst the farming class the very highest of the land. It was said that George III. found more pleasure in his farm than he did in his kingdom. The late Prince Consort was also fond of agriculture, and was most successful in its pursuit. Then there were few of the great noblemen and landowners of this country who were not more or less practical agriculturists, and there was one who was the foremost in the agricultural world—he referred to the first Earl of Leicester. From the great noblemen downwards, among those who owned large portions of land, there were few who were not more less connected with agriculture. Then there was the class of gentlemen agriculturists. There were numbers of gentlemen of ample means who followed the calling, not as a business, to obtain a livelihood, but as a or * Paper read before the Lavenham Farmers' Club. calling in which they found a good deal of |