We were aware that the gentlemen who, in a manly straightforward way, gave us the privilege of publishing their names as drawing up and attesting facts consistent with their knowledge and experience of agriculture, might be exposed to impertinence and cavil, and we were resolved to punish any assailant in the slightest degree worthy of notice. These witnesses of ours were selected by us from their high reputations as farmers, and in very few instances were we acquainted with their opinions, political or other. We appealed to them as the highest court of authority that we could find in matters agricultural; and since their names were published, what we have heard from others confirms us in our estimate of them. There are farmers as good as they; but the history of farming in Scotland, for the last thirty years, proves that they stand second to none in their profession; and it is most absurd and indiscreet in any man to rush into print, proclaiming that they are behind the age; ignorant, it would seem, of the uses of oilcake and guano. Mr Caird has done this, and must therefore undergo condign punishment. The fortuitous importance of Mr Caird lies in the circumstance that his mode of stating an exceptional case in farming has been seized hold of by the whole troop of enemies to British agricultural industry, as a handle for insult to his brother farmers, and a specimen of what might be effected throughout the country under the blessings of Free Trade. We do not think that Mr Caird even dreamed of this when he wrote his first pamphlet; on the contrary, we feel satisfied that his intentions were good. In our January paper we were purposely tender to him—most unwilling to say anything that might hurt his feelings—and it was only the clatter that had been made about his pamphlet, that induced us to mention him at all. Our excellent and kind-hearted friend Mr Stephens at first declined to come forward personally, and expose the fallacy of the Auchness system of husbandry, and only did so when we explained our reasons for thinking that it ought to be done. We are greatly surprised at the unbecoming tone of Mr Caird's remarks about Mr Stephens, and did not suppose that any man at all acquainted with Scottish agriculture would have presumed so to speak of the author of the Book of the Farm.
When we saw "Donald Caird come again," in the shape of a vindication from an imaginary attack, we felt much pained that he had forced himself upon us. He does not attack us directly, but—what is much more unpardonable in our eyes—he attacks and foolishly sneers at the gentlemen who furnished us with undeniable facts, none of whom, with the exception of Mr Stephens, ever mentioned his name, or were thinking of him at all.
We have still a regard for the yeoman of Baldoon, as there are many good points about him. He possesses capital pluck; and had the right honourable Baronet, who has made a cat's-paw of him, been gifted with half as much of the same excellent quality, the Corn Laws would never have been repealed. Will he take a suggestion at our hands, to beware lest boldness degenerate into temerity?
Without further preamble, we leave him in the hands of that austere veteran, Cato the Censor, author of De Re Rusticâ, &c., who has kindly come forward to protect us. We recently had one of the Censor's family, "Porcius," analysing with playful irony the pigs and ammonia of the amiable Rector of Saffron-Waldon, Mr Huxtable. Those acquainted with the treatise De Re Rusticâ will be delighted to see that the aged head of the Gens Porcia is still writing with undiminished vigour.]
Cato the Censor to Mr James Caird.
Columella Lodge, March 1850.
Sir,—I need not tell you that I have always taken a deep interest in your prosperity and welfare, and have watched your progress onwards to your present elevation. Not without trembling anxiety did I hear of the publication of your first pamphlet. Many a man has been spoiled by attempting literature; and I have known one or two whose whole future lives were rendered useless by the mere fact of their having indited a pamphlet. However, the perusal of your High Farming under Liberal Covenants, the Best Substitute for Protection, somewhat quieted my fears. The thing was plausibly done; and I had a hope that nothing very calamitous would come out of it. I supposed it possible, even, that the pawky compliment so adroitly ministered to Sir R. Peel in the opening paragraph of your essay, and repeated yet more adroitly in the peroration, might not be without its fruits. If the doctor, in this age of political quackery, ever recovered the premiership, I was hopeful that he would remember you. This was no doubt what you intended, and it was praiseworthy. But oh, my dear sir, what poignant and unfeigned pain have I experienced in perusing your second agricultural essay, which you entitle High Farming Vindicated, and further Illustrated! The tone and execution of this performance is all bad. It is written in bad temper. It is brimful of an over-weening vanity. After an exordium sufficiently egotistical, it affects to be a reply to "the Editor of Blackwood." You fly at high game. Your vanity surely cannot go the length of fancying that the veiled Editor of Ebony will step out of Buchanan Lodge to answer your summons in person. It is possible, but not probable, that he may devote a little bit of margin to you, and enshrine you in a foot-note, like a fly in amber. Such immortality may be your inheritance—I hope not. You are scarcely the kind of Dalgetty whom he would take the trouble of engaging either as an opponent or a retainer; and it is this conviction which moves me, in the present instance, to address you. You require advice; and although it is very much against the grain with me to take up the pen, yet, out of my regard for you, and for those that went before you, I am constrained to address you on the topics touched upon in your High Farming Vindicated, and further Illustrated. Be thankful, my dear sir, that the operator is not the Editor of Blackwood. I will handle you tenderly, and, if the cautery is indispensable, will remember the quaint and gentle old Izaak's instruction to the angler, when directing him how to fix the frog on the hook—"In so doing, use him as though you loved him."
There are some delusions under which you are labouring, that I must, in the first instance, set myself to remove. In your introductory paragraph, you express your astonishment that your first pamphlet, of some thirty pages, should have formed the subject of so much discussion, and have originated violent controversies, and been productive, to use your own awkwardly-rustic metaphor, of "a whole sheaf of pamphlets," (p. 3-4.)
Well, I wonder too: but it is not the first time that dire events have sprung from trivial causes; and you seem strangely blind to the real origin of the popularity that attended your first essay. In your High Farming Vindicated, you describe its predecessor as "chiefly a narrative of the system pursued by a practical farmer in your neighbourhood, which that gentleman had found highly remunerative." Had this been all, the brochure would have attracted little notice, and caused no discussion. But this is not a correct account of its object and scope. The titlepage—High Farming under Liberal Covenants, the best Substitute for Protection—is a true exponent of the object of the author. The very titlepage acted like magic. For mark at the moment when you launched your bantling into the world. The agricultural depression was grievous; prices were sinking daily; the farmers saw their capital disappearing, and ruin apparently staring them in the face; and, in the emergency, you step forward, and offer them an infallible panacea in your High Farming the best Substitute for Protection. There never was anything so opportune. The suffering farmers flew to you, read you greedily, and arose from the perusal angry that they were so trifled with, and with a conviction that your High Farming as a substitute for protection, and a cure for their sufferings, was a mere quackish nostrum.
But this was not all. There was another numerous class, also in extremis, for whom you had good news—I mean the free-trade press and the free-trade proprietors. This powerful but distressed community hailed your appearance, and hugged you to their bosoms. They were beginning to see that all their predictions regarding the effects of Free Trade on the agricultural interest were to be falsified; one moiety of them feared that their rents would topple; and at the critical moment you advertise High Farming a Substitute for Protection. You were a perfect godsend to the Free-traders; and for them it is undeniable you chiefly wrote, and not for the behoof of your brother farmers. If that had been your object, you never could have commenced with comparing the Scotch farmer to a melancholious cripple, nor have talked of the "prejudices" of those who have been bred to the agricultural profession. Indeed, an under-current of foolish sneering at your brethren pervaded your first pamphlet, which, in your High Farming Vindicated, has come to the surface, and rushes along in a head-long and angry torrent. The result has proved the correctness of this view. The free-trade press are playing you off against your fellow-farmers, and bespattering you with praise. Sir R. Peel has patted you on the back, and deluded you into a roving commission; and the free-trade proprietors, catching your note, are denouncing the farmers for want of enterprise, skill, and capital. To you your brother farmers are indebted for these free-trade compliments. I hope, then, that you will hereafter understand the real cause of the discussions that followed the publication of your first lucubration. The tempting title you gave your thesis, and the solace you offered the farmers, and the pleasant prescription you presented to panic-struck free-trade lairds, and the seasonable moment you selected for publication, sufficiently explain your popularity. The little urchin that throws a spark amongst gunpowder causes smoke and an explosion; and yet there may have been nothing singularly meritorious in his performance. Your lucifer-match fell among combustible materials, and had it not been so, it would have proved noiseless and innocuous. I am anxious to expound the true origin of the noise you have made. It is painful to me to notice the extent of your hallucination. You are quite inflated with the idea of being famous; and it will be real kindness to puncture you, were it only to let the wind out. The "hoven" in cattle, when at its height, can only be cured by acupuncturation.