being of the best, and everybody at the great
round table making the best—for a wonder—of
himself and of his neighbour.

FARMING BY STEAM.

BY the help of railways, the callings of the
farmer and the merchant, in districts within
easy reach of some of the great towns, are
now united.  This fact is beginning to tell hard
on some of the tenant-farmers who depend
entirely on the produce of their lands for livelihood.
The losses and crosses incidental to the farm are
borne by the merchant-farmer with a resignation
not common among country people.  He has seen,
in the oscillations of commerce, larger sums lost
or won by a single stroke, than his crop and
stock could make in a whole year; so he has
learnt to take his rebuffs quietly.  At the same
time, he is keen at a bargain, and there is no
waste allowed on his establishment.  When he
has reckoned up the amount to be provided for
rent; his rent-charge commutation in lieu of
tithes; his land tax, poor rates, bad hay, mouldy
grain, diseased cattle—and a dozen obstinate and
ugly facts which could be so dwelt upon as to
make the old original British farmer a prophet of
woe in the market-place for fifty-two weeks every
year—this new farmer consoles himself, when a
few hundreds are on the wrong side of his farm
accounts, with the reflection that they only
represent the cost of relaxation from the cares of
business.  Therefore he will go on selling his
bacon at sixpence when it cost him a shilling a
pound, and butter at fourteenpence which a
careful calculation proves to have cost him half-a-
crown. His chickens, ducks, and turkeys, are
almost a success. He can rear them within a
trifle of what he could buy them for in the meat
market, after he has had the pleasure of seeing
them run about, and of hearing them cackle and
crow  "extra parliamentary utterances."

Wherever such men bring their wealth into
the farmer's neighbourhood, the farmer who
is dependent on his land for bread cannot sustain
their competition.  Whatever may be the
ultimate tendency of this disturbing influence on
agriculture, its earlier results do not at present
tend to improve the position of the poorer class
of farmers.

But skill and enterprise are now brought into
action by our merchant-agriculturists.  They
will have the best machinery; and, though a
good many implements prove useless, they bear
the expense of practical trial; poorer men wait
and learn from them when the inventor's effort
really produces a saving of time, labour, and
outlay.  It would be idle now to speak of steam
as an experiment, when all the men who are at
the head of their profession look on it as
indispensable upon the farm.  It makes its way
quietly but surely.  The old plough, that lazily
scratched its one furrow, is given up for an
implement which passes briskly over the ground,
and turns up in its progress three furrows, or
even more, at every passage.  The wheat,
barley, beans, peas, and oats, are expeditiously
thrashed out on a fine autumn day according to
demand, and there is no more flail work,
however handy the flail may have been of old as
occupation for the men in wet and boisterous weather.
With influences of this kind, the education and
manners of the tenantry have really kept pace.
Some time ago a shrewd writer spoke of such
farmers as men to whom their grandfathers would
have taken off their hats; and no one who remembers
some of their grandfathers, and has visited
the Royal Agricultural Society's show-yard, or
meetings of the local associations, or the corn
and cattle markets in our better-farmed districts,
will dispute the truth of such a saying.  That
many are still lagging behind their day is true
of every class of men.

The present tendency of farming is, however,
to the use of capital upon large farms.  Many
small farmers must be, sooner or later, driven
from the field.  The change may be, and should
be, slow.  Already some landowners who have
numerous small farms appear to be expecting
and endeavouring to defer the full accomplishment
of such a change.  At an important county
meeting recently held in the north of England,
it was suggested that a certain number of tenants
should unite and form a company for purchase
and use of steam machinery.  The plan remains
to be tried, and is open to criticism. Given
any ten men with small holdings and a steam-
engine for their common use: each farmer will
want to thrash his grain so as to sell to the best
advantage, even if he resign the use of the steam-
engine on other occasions to his neighbour.  On
arable land the cleverest and most enterprising
man of the ten will win. He will with equal
conditions out-general the nine, buy their
machinery, and rent their land.  The remains of
the company will descend a step in the social
ladder, and become in name what they are now
in fact—farm labourers.  The practice of hiring
machinery by the job is common in some counties,
but the farmer in that case seldom has the
use of it on the days most convenient and
profitable to himself.  The capitalist who owns the
steam power, and land enough to keep it well
employed, has still the larger and the surer
profits.

On dairy farms, where wife and family assist
in the care and management of three or four
cows, or even on fruit lands, where the same
help is available, the conditions of a livelihood
may remain much as they are at present.  At
all events, changes in store for them are too
remote to need present attention.

One chief occupation for many of the small
tenant-farmers who are now, it is to be feared,
being forced into a false position by the new
agents at work on the farm, will be that of farm
bailiffs. Such men are conversant with
practical details, and trustworthy.  It is true that
men are born to a wholesome discipline of
trouble, and must find their level in the world
in the natural progress of affairs.  But it is most
honourable of those landowners who would
devise some means for protecting families, long