lated states, to have the lands tilled, and grain produced in abundance! how among the Assyrians and Persians, the governor of a well cultivated province, was rewarded, and that in which tillage was neglected, brought punishment and disgrace on its satrap; how the Indians set apart a whole tribe for tillage, that the art might be the more effectually improved; how the Greeks and Romans made many and wise laws to encourage and enforce agriculture, and appointed rewards and punishments for that purpose; neither shall I trouble you with the names of above fifty eminent Greek writers, who laboured in this important subject, and whom you may see reckoned up by Varro. Several of the most learned and judicious among the Romans, though a people so naturally turned to war, such as Cato, Varro, and Columella, handled it with great skill and accuracy.. The greatest geniuses in poetry, such as Hesiod, Menecrates and Virgil, adorned it with the most excellent embellishments of their art. Even kings and princes, for instance, Hiero of Syracuse, Attalus of Pergamus, Archelaus of Cappadocia, and Mago the Carthaginian general, employed their pens on tillage, a subject of infinite consequence to their people. Some perhaps may think it strange, that men so highly dignified by genius or employment, should stoop to such a subject. But we should consider, that nothing so absolutely necessary to the lives of men, and the welfare of a country, can be mean, or below the care of a wise or a great man.

Besides, such men only can make improvements in any art. Uneducated people are ignorant and slow of thought. The husbandman, in particular, is always taken up with doing, rather than considering what ought to be done. Men of understanding and fortune are the only persons, who have sense, substance, and leisure to make experiments, and invent instruments for the improvement of husbandry. They should therefore set themselves diligently to the business, that they might become useful teachers to their tenants. They should read, travel, and make experiments for this purpose. If they set apart a portion of their demesnes for tillage, that piece of ground would answer the end of a little experimental academy, where agriculture might be learned, and the visible success would recommend

the theory. Out of such a spot of ground they would derive amusement and health, and would render husbandry fashionable among their tenants and neighbours.

The English have demonstrated a wise and close attention to agriculture, as may appear from the several laws made for its encouragement in the reigns of their wisest princes. The earth hath been grateful for their care; it has produced immense riches and men invincible in war.

But, to our shame be it spoken, we have little considered this matter, till of late, that some persons, somewhat more awake to our interest, than the rest, have began to rouse the nation to some concern about it.

The ingenious Arthur Dobbs, esq. employed great care, and a good understanding in this cause about fifteen years ago.

The Querist, whose understanding in the interest of the nation, and every thing else, is beyond all encomiums, among a great variety of useful hints, has furnished the public with some most judicious ones on the subject of tillage.

The author of the book entitled, Considerations and Resolutions, &c. has done prodigious service by that performance, not only to the design of ploughing our grounds, but to many other schemes for the public interest. But his premiums, proposed in his letter to the Dublin Society, to which he put his hand, as well as his pen, have given some motion and life to a spirit of husbandry, which before that was only wished for.

Several members of the Dublin Society, have touched very judiciously, and instructively on some branches of agriculture in 1738, a very good pamphlet was published, entitled A Treatise on Tillage, and inscribed to the parliament. It is well worth your reading; but the computation concerning the comparative profits of tillage and grazing, happening to be defective, has led the author into the capital mistake, mentioned already, of allowing the private advantage to be on the side of pasturage, at the same time that he asserts the public interest lies in tillage.

A very useful paper was published this last summer, called, A proposal for lowering the price of bread-corn; in which the sense of the English, in former times, is shewn 2 B

VOL. V.

by several well-chosen quotations, and a short but sensi-. ble account of the granaries in Switzerland is communicated to the public.

Some years ago an act was made to enforce the tillage of five acres in the hundred, which had it been regarded, even as a piece of good advice, not to say, revered as a law, the experiments, made here and there in consequence of it, would have quite determined the controversy about tillage before this time.

This affair was also recommended from the throne to the farther care of both houses of parliament, at the beginning, if I mistake not, of the last session.

And now again, at the opening of this session, his grace the lord-lieutenant has pressed it anew, and the honourable House of Commons have promised a warm and vigorous attention to it.

Tillage, in short, has been the constant cry, for a good many years past, of all the wise and compassionate part of the nation. But our late famines and mortalities, I hope, have now raised this cry to such a loudness, as no ear can be deaf to, and no heart insensible of.

It is high time, sir, to remove the infamous reproach of idleness, stupidity, and beggary, so justly thrown on us by all our neighbouring nations, to enjoy the fertility of our own lands, and to find a profitable employment for a poor unhappy people, hitherto useless, distressed and starved. We have great numbers of people, but they do nothing; and a most fruitful soil, but it bears only grass. Our people die by thousands for mere want of bread, on one of the richest soils in the world. This is a shameful paradox. Tell it not in England, publish it not in Holland.

Were an Hollander inquiring about our country, told that Ireland, lying in a temperate climate, has generally speaking, a most fertile soil, in many places navigable rivers, on all sides convenient harbours, a prodigious abundance of both fresh and salt water fish, firing for little or nothing, and many other articles of natural wealth, which most countries are destitute of; and besides all, has enjoyed an uninterrupted peace for upwards of fifty-three years, he would immediately conclude, that Ireland must

be one of the most populous and wealthy countries in the world.

But should he be told, that, instead of being populous, one half of it can hardly be said to be inhabited, and yet that its inhabitants have little or nothing to do, and are starving for want of bread; that it is oftener visited with famine, than any other country under heaven, and every famine attended as a natural and necessary consequence, with a pestilence that sweeps away its inhabitants in prodigious numbers, who also crowd out to America, and elsewhere, so fast, that it is in danger of being unpeopled in a little time; that as to its wealth, it is one of the poorest countries in the world; were he told all this, he would then ask, from whence proceeded a distress so unaccountable?

If we told him the infamous truth, that as to trade, excepting in the one branch of the linen manufacture, it is wholly neglected; that we set apart all our worst grounds, our northern and mountainous lands, for tillage, and keep our rich plains for grazing either bullocks, because we have not bark to tan our hides, or sheep, because we are forbid to export our wool manufactured; that we are satisfied to take claret, currants, raisins, olives, and French laces for our beef; that we think it nearer to go to England or even to America for corn, than to the ground we tread on; that our gentlemen of estates would rather set their lands to bullocks and sheep at 7s. per acre, than to men at fifteen, or twenty; that instead of spending their money at home, and endeavouring to improve their estates, where they might be almost adored, they lavish it away about the English court, where they are laughed at as a poor brainless sort of people, and treated with insufferable contempt; that in consequence of our idleness and want of provisions, the industrious few are forced to maintain, at least, four times their number of people, who do nothing at all, of whom about fifty thousand go constantly a begging, and are very careful to breed up their children to thievery; were he told all this, his wonder at our poverty would quickly cease, or rather would be changed into surprise that any people could possibly be so sottish, and so infatuated. He might probably ask, if a remedy for such evils was ever thought of: and if we should tell him that always

in time of scarcity and pestilence, every one cries out for tillage and granaries; but as soon as ever the winds, on which we depend for bread have brought relief, not a soul ever thinks of tillage or granaries again; if this were told him how would he be astonished!

Just as I was going to conclude this tedious letter, a friend, who is well acquainted with trade, both as it respects the private dealer and the nation, and from whom I had several very judicious hints, particularly the computation of the expenses and labour of a farmer's family, entered my room with a paper in his hand; which, upon perusal, I found contained a thought so extremely agreeable in itself, and so proper to illustrate and enforce all I have been saying, that I could not help inserting it.

I shall suppose, says my friend, that two landed gentlemen, one from the north, and the other from the south of Ireland, do discover somewhere to the west of this kingdom, two islands, and take possession as sovereigns and proprietors of said islands. The soil of both is the same, and they differ not in any other respect, save that the island, seized by the southern gentleman, contains three thousand acres, the other but two thousand. Each of these proprietors, to make the most of his island, sets it off to tenants, the southern gentleman, to three graziers, those being the most solvent sort of tenants in his native country, and the northern gentleman to forty husbandmen at fifty acres to a farm.

Now as graziers cannot make more than 20s. per acre out of middling ground, and as such tenants, as are able to stock one thousand acres of land, will not take land at so high a rent, as poorer men would, the southern proprietor is obliged to set his land to the three graziers at 10s. per acre, and for twenty years.

**

On the other hand, the northern proprietor, though he knows that such tenants as take small farms, in order to tillage, can be had in great numbers to cant for his land, and that an acre of ground in oats only, at 4s. 8d. per barrel will produce above 41. yet being willing to give some encouragement to industrious people from the neighbouring countries, to come and settle in his island, he sets his small farms at 10s. by the acre, and for the term of twenty years.

Let us suppose that each of these proprietors reserves