manufacture, a succession of good crops
may glut the markets, ruin the tenant, and even reduce the
money wages of the labourer. In Norway neither good nor bad
crops can affect the proportion of population to the land
that could in ordinary seasons subsist on it. Paying no
rent, the Norwegian yeoman farmer is not usually employed in
prospective improvements, but simply in raising food, so
that he can see at once whether the land is sufficient to
produce subsistence for himself and his labourers. If grain
and potatoes for the use of the farm, and a little surplus
for sale to pay the land-tax and buy luxuries with, can be
raised by the farm, all the purposes of farming in Norway
are answered.

On the subject of pauperism, Mr. Laing alleges that 'the dread of
poverty was less influential in Norway, where extreme destitution is as
rare as great wealth, and where there is so much less difference in the
comforts and consideration of the richer and poorer classes.' The
indigent were farmed out for a week or so at a time among the yeomen
farmers, 'whose poor-rate like the tithes of the Church, was too
inconsiderable to mention.' The state of property, and its general
diffusion throughout the social body, had also, he had no doubt, a
beneficial effect on the moral condition of the people. 'The desire for
wealth being considerably blunted, it was not the same actuating,
engrossing principle of human action, the spring of much that was evil
and immoral being thus removed.' Only one case of downright
drunkenness--that of a Laplander--had come under his personal
observation, and it was only on special occasions that the yeoman farmer
could be seen a little elated. His theory, however (we may remark in
passing), respecting the influence of property on the moral condition of
the people is not supported by other facts which he quotes, namely, that
owing to the restraints upon marriage, 'exercised as in Paris or London,
by a high standard of living,' the 'proportion of illegitimate to
legitimate children in Norway was 1 in 5,' while in a parish he
specifies, it was (between 1826 and 1830) 'as high as 1 in 3-26/136.' He
mentions that engagements between couples lasted generally one, two, and
often several years, especially in the case of servants in husbandry
waiting for a house and land to settle in as cotters. In such cases, he
says, 'it too often happened that the privileged