waggons, carts, implements, L100;
labour, three men at 12s. per week, L94; harvest labour, L20; dairymaid
L10; tithe, taxes, rates, &c., L100; rent, L2 per acre, L500. Total,
L1874. In other words (exclusive of the capital invested in stock), the
outgoings amount to L724 per annum; against which put--fifty cows' milk,
&c., at L10 per head, L500; fifty calves, L100; fifty tons of hay at L3,
10s., L175. Total income, L775; balance in hand, L51. Then comes the
village school subscription; sometimes a church rate (legally voluntary,
but morally binding), &c.

So that, in hard figures (all these are below the mark, if anything),
there is positively nothing left for the farmer but a house and garden
free. How, then, is money made? By good judgment in crops, in stock, by
lucky accidents. On a dairy-farm the returns begin immediately; on an
arable one there is half a year at least to wait. The care, the
judgment, required to be exercised is something astonishing, and a
farmer is said to be all his life learning his trade. If sheep are dear
and pay well, the farmer plants roots; then, perhaps, after a heavy
expenditure for manure, for labour, and seed, there comes the fly, or a
drought, and his capital is sunk. On the other hand, if the season be
good, roots are cheap and over-plentiful, and where is his profit then?
He works like a labourer himself in all weathers and at all times; he
has the responsibility and the loss, yet he is expected to find the
labourer, not only good cottages, allotments, schooling, good wages, but
Heaven knows what besides. Supposing the L1874 (on the dairy-farm) be
borrowed capital for which he must pay at least 4 per cent.--and few,
indeed, are there who get money at that price--it is obvious how hard
he must personally work, how hard, too, he must live, to make both ends
meet. And it speaks well for his energy and thrift that I heard a bank
director not long since remark that he had noticed, after all, with
every drawback, the tenant farmers had made as a rule more money in
proportion than their landlords. A harder-working class of men does not
exist than the Wiltshire farmers.

Only a few days ago I saw in your valuable paper a list, nearly a column
long, of the millionaires who had died in the last ten years. It would
be interesting to know how much they had spent for the benefit of the
agricultural labourer. Yet no one attacks them. They pay no poor-rates,
no local taxation, or nothing in propor