cows or wheel out manure from the yards any
more than the daughters of tradesmen; neither that his sons should
say 'Ay' and 'Noa,' and exhibit a total disregard of grammar and
ignorance of all social customs. The piano, he thinks, is quite as
much in its place in his cool parlour as in the stuffy so-called
drawing-room at his grocer's in the petty town hard by, where they
are so particular to distinguish the social ranks of 'professional
tradesmen' from common tradesmen. Here in all this, even supposing
it kept down to economical limits, there exists a considerable
margin of expenditure greater than in our forefathers' time. True,
wool is dearer, meat dearer; but to balance that put the increased
cost of artificial manure and artificial food--two things no farmer
formerly bought--and do not forget that the seasons rule all things,
and are quite as capricious as ever, and when there is a bad season
the loss is much greater than it used to be, just as the foundering
of an ironclad costs the nation more than the loss of a frigate.

Experience every day brings home more and more the fatal truth that
moderate farms do not pay, and there are even ominous whispers about
the 2,000 acres system. The agriculturist says that, work how he
may, he only gets 8 per cent. per annum; the tradesman, still more
the manufacturer, gets only 2 per cent. each time, but he turns his
money over twenty times a year, and so gets 40 per cent. per annum.
Eight per cent. is a large dividend on one transaction, but it is
very small for a whole year--a year, the one-thirtieth of a man's
whole earning period, if we take him to be in a business at
twenty-five, and to be in full work till fifty-five, a fair
allowance. Now, why is it that this cry arises that agriculture will
not pay? and why is it that the farmer only picks up 8 per cent.?
The answer is simple enough. It is because the earth is idle a third
of the year. So far as actual cash return is concerned, one might
say it was idle eleven out of the twelve months. But that is hardly
fair. Say a third of the year.

The earth does not continue yielding a crop day by day as the
machines do in the manufactory. The nearest approach to the
manufactory is the dairy, whose cows send out so much milk per diem;
but the cows go dry for their calves. Out of the tall chimney shaft
there floats a taller column of dark smoke hour after hour; the vast
engines puff and snort and labour perhaps the whole twenty-f