You say that, from Blackwood's statistics, "it appears that an impression has been created on the south side of the Border, that the agriculture of Scotland has long been in a decaying condition; and it is as much to vindicate the credit of his country from an aspersion on its agriculture, as to support the views which he formerly promulgated, that the writer takes this mode of replying," (p. 5.) That the Southrons should infer from Blackwood's statistics that the agriculture of Scotland is on the decline, seems incredible. Sir R. Peel leads us to infer that his tenants only grow from 18 to 20 bushels per acre. Mr Huxtable's hypothetical mark, arrived at by the use of no one knows how much ammonia, is 32 bushels per acre. As a sample of Blackwood's statistics, take Mr Dudgeon's. He grows, on an average of years, 33 bushels wheat per acre, 40 bushels barley, 48 bushels oats. Could the Tamworth baronet take this as a proof of decaying husbandry? As an average produce for a series of years, on a farm of 500 acres "of useful land," would Mr Huxtable himself think this evidence of an agricultural decline? But how are the Auchness statistics to dispel the gloomy impression regarding the moribund state of agriculture in North Britain, which, you say, has been created by Blackwood's statistics? On comparing the detailed account of annual produce of Auchness, in the fifth edition of your first pamphlet, with the number of acres under crop, as given in p. 15, we find that Mr M'Culloch grows 36 bushels wheat per acre, and 45 bushels oats: that is, the Auchness factor grows 3 bushels wheat more per acre than Mr Dudgeon, and Mr Dudgeon grows 3 bushels oats more per acre than the factor. This is the mighty difference. How is it possible, then, that the Auchness statistics can counteract the evil impression made on John Bull's mind by Blackwood's statistics? At Auchness, indeed, you can present John with a watery potato; but to a man in low spirits, as John is about Scotland, that would only increase his flatulence. As for a drop of malt, the thing is unknown at Auchness, barley being an extinct cereal there; and if a horn of wholesome home-brewed can clear off from John's mind the ugly impression, and give him brighter views of Scottish agriculture, he must go to Mr Dudgeon for that.
And yet you are the man who are to "vindicate the credit of your country!" When I read this, I laughed aloud. Poor old Scotland! I saw her reviled and misrepresented by Blackwood's troop of statists, and her agriculture exhibited as in a dwining condition. And I saw you, fire in your eye, and in "your nostril beautiful disdain," sallying forth, armed cap-à-pie, a devoted and gallant chevalier, to do vengeance on the enemies of your native land. And methought I heard you exclaim in a heroical ecstasy—"I will vindicate the credit of my country!" My dear sir, you may be ambitious to live in Caledonian story as the champion of Scotland; but it is more probable that you may be only recollected as the Don Quixotte of Baldoon. Dr Johnson tells us of a patriotic butcher, who was haunted with the idea that his country was on its last legs, and whose continual exclamation was—"My heart bleeds for my country!" 'Tis said that the butcher grew fat, and the country yet exists.
Blackwood's statistics were expressly put forward as embodying the average produce for a term of years of the average soil in the different districts selected for illustration, and farmed according to the best modes. Extraordinary and exceptional produce and profits were properly avoided, as well as extraordinary failures or losses in crops; and surely the average was high enough, if we may infer anything from the reports of the Times' own commissioner, to convince our friends on the south side of the Border that our agriculture was not absolutely in a decaying condition; and therefore I am constrained to believe that you are misinformed regarding this "impression." And even if it were otherwise, and, supposing that Blackwood had injured your country, should you not have modestly asked whether you were the man fit to avenge your country's wrongs? There is another most singular delusion in which you seem to be immersed. You fancy that the surpassingly able and striking article in Blackwood, which has excited a deeper and more general sensation in the kingdom than perhaps any article that ever appeared in any British periodical, has been got up solely and exclusively for the purpose of refuting and overthrowing your pamphlet! "And finally, the Editor of Blackwood's Magazine, backed by the whole influence of the Protectionist party in Scotland, has brought up a heavy troop of yeomanry to extinguish the opinions I advanced, by an overwhelming exhibition of authority. Acknowledging the compliment implied in the necessity for this array, I think my readers will now feel that it is not the advocate, but the cause, which is inextinguishable," (p. 30.) The whole Protectionist party, you fancy, have entered into a wicked league to expose you! Nor is this all. Plainly, your idea is that the Editor of Blackwood, and his learned ally, the author of The Book of the Farm, were afraid to encounter you; and, conscious of their weakness, that they summoned to their assistance Messrs Watson, Dudgeon, Gibson, and the thirty agriculturists who certiorate their statements. What a host!—gathered together from the south and north, and east and west, all marshalled in warlike array, to put down Mr James Caird, farmer, Baldoon! Was there ever such a hallucination? or did human vanity ever take such a flight before? You think it proved, by the mustered troops that have been brought to bear upon you, that it is not the advocate but the cause which is inextinguishable. The cause, doubtless, is as inextinguishable as the Auchness potatoes. But who ever dreamed of the advocate as being indestructible? I never heard of you as the inextinguishable Mr Caird—the unconsumable Phœnix of the West. You are very distinguished, but not inextinguishable. Oh! dismiss the vain fancy, or intolerable ridicule will dog you all the days of your life. Can a man not write on British agriculture, and illustrate the depression of agricultural produce flowing from the invasion of Free Trade, without having Mr Caird in his eye? Or if I utter the words "high farming," must you instantly prick up your ears, and ask me snappishly, "Do you bite your thumb at me?" The idea of high farming being the substitute for protection was your own—but you neither invented, nor do you practise, the Auchness modes of husbandry. You were not the discoverer of the Auchness wonders; you were the cicerone, the mere narrator of them. You were not the man that caught the lion, but the gentleman with the long pole who describes to the gaping gobemouches the qualities of the king of the beasts. Johnson had his Boswell, Addison his Tom Tickell, and Robinson Crusoe his man Friday; and there seems no reason why Mr M'Culloch should not have his Caird. But you quite over-estimate the importance of your position. Blackwood spoke of you with a studied gentleness, as if unwilling to hurt your feelings; and Blackwood's farmers make not the remotest reference to you, and never once mention your name. And yet, in your High Farming Vindicated, you pour out on these gentlemen an inky flood of petulant impertinence. You speak of their statistics as "counter-statements" (p. 7.) to yours. Your vanity makes you think so. They never once allude to you; and if the article in Blackwood brought them to bear on the high farming theory, it might surely be the high farming of Mechi or Huxtable, as well as of Caird.
There is yet another kindred delusion to the preceding, which you are fondly cherishing. You evidently fancy yourself a martyr! "I have often," you say, "both in public and private, been attacked for my advocacy of the cause of my brother tenants. I have been upbraided, and have suffered in the estimation of men of rank, for doing so. An interested portion of the press have distorted my arguments, to prove to their readers that I am an enemy to the farmer," (p. 30.) Oh, unhappy man! Your immortal labours unappreciated—your words distorted—your character attacked, and, to consummate your sufferings—your reputation injured in the estimation of men of rank! From the bottom of my heart, I pity you. You have been a very ill-used man. But let us be calm, and inquire into the cause of your persecution. You see, my dear sir, in the opening sentence of your first pamphlet, you personified your brother farmers under the image of a poor hypochondriac cripple, the victim of imaginary ailments; and you afterwards insinuated that the agriculturists of the country, who had been trained and bred up to their profession, were cropful of "prejudices:" that the gentleman who so wrote might be an "enemy to the farmer," was a natural enough mistake for people to fall into. Moreover, your representation of high farming as the substitute for Protection, and as sufficient to uphold the tottering rent-rolls under the regime of Free Trade, must have been considered insidious and dangerous doctrine, in the estimation of all those who looked upon the Auchness crutch as rotten and treacherous timber, and us calculated to injure tenants by ministering delusive expectations to the landlords. Have not the Free-trade newspapers, "the interested portion of the press," made this very use of your arguments, and are not Free-trade proprietors acting upon it? On this ground have you not proved an enemy to the farmer, and are those greatly to blame who think so?
But, indeed, although it be, I would not have you too deeply to distress yourself; although you have proved, unwittingly perhaps, an enemy to the farmer, it is not certain that your brother tenants will suffer irremediable ruin from the productions of your pen. Consider that the assaults of such an enemy British farmers may possibly withstand. To have forfeited the good opinion of your brother farmers is very unfortunate, but to have lost the approving smiles of men of rank is a sorer evil still. You seem utterly destitute and forsaken, and my sympathetic nature prompts me, therefore, to suggest to you another source of comfort. Remember that all really great men have been persecuted. Such is the way of this wicked world. Milton fell "on evil days and evil tongues," and yet his Tetrachordon "walked the town awhile numbering good intellects;" and most heartily did the "old man eloquent" denounce "the asses, apes, and dogs," that with barbarous noise environed him. This is your very case. The parallel is complete. Galileo, a great discoverer, although in a different department from yours, had his arguments distorted by an interested priest, and twice suffered the tortures of the Inquisition. You may be the agricultural Galileo of the nineteenth century. It may be that, like all men of genius, you are only before the age. In your present persecutions you may be only paying the penalty of your genius, and what the greatest benefactors of the human race have ever had to endure. Posterity will be more just, and give you your award when the ephemeral Blackwood shall have perished and been forgotten. In the distant future you will be famous: consider this, and be no longer inconsolable.
What reason have you for saying, (p. 4,) that the Protectionists employed the leading organ of their party in North Britain to write down this system? Does not the insinuation indicate a pitiful misrepresentation on your part, or an extraordinary ignorance? Has Blackwood proved himself venal? have the writers of that periodical indicated mercenary tendencies? At the era of the late memorable tergiversation, which inflicted such a disgraceful wound on the political morality of our nation, did Blackwood trim and temporise? On the contrary, did he not maintain his integrity, and nail his colours to the mast, and fight the battle which he had always fought? Are not the views and opinions advocated in the article to which you refer, the very views and opinions which Blackwood, with unswerving consistency, has always maintained? All the world knew this to be the fact, and what necessity was there for the Protectionists "employing" the leading organ to do what it had always done, and would infallibly continue to do?
But worse, and more unwarrantable, if possible, are your reflections on the character of the gentlemen who furnished Blackwood with his agricultural statistics. "The farmers of Blackwood are content to be held up, for a political purpose, in an aspect discreditable to the national character as Scottish agriculturists," (p. 21.) You describe these gentlemen as venal subservient tools, ready to do a discreditable job for a political purpose. I must be permitted to tell you that this is a false and childish calumny. Many of these parties I know, and they are incapable of such baseness. More honourable or independent men are not in the kingdom, and that they should sell themselves to serve a purpose is a charge sufficiently malignant, but too absurd to meet with credence. What unprincipled purpose could their statistics serve? Their statistics seemed to class them with the political minority in Parliament at least. This did not indicate selfishness: commissioner-ships they were not courting. Some of them might be opposing the Free-trade theories of their proprietors: this does not look like servile meanness. You must have known that, on the question of politics generally, these farmers did not all agree with Blackwood; that on many points they differ with one another, and that yet they unite in testifying to the disastrous effects of Free Trade on the agriculture of the nation. The evidence of their integrity and conscientiousness is irresistible, and it has been felt to be so. And yet here are you, with foolish recklessness, insinuating that about thirty of the best known, most eminent, and best-informed agriculturists in the kingdom, who never once mentioned your name, are capable of conduct mean and dishonourable, and content to be held up for a political purpose. If your gratuitous and unprovoked accusation should lower you henceforth in the estimation of the tenant-farmers of your native land, you have yourself alone to blame. It has ever been reckoned the proof of meanness, and the evidence of quackery, in any member of a profession to revile his brethren, and to disparage the well-won reputation of its most distinguished members. In this unenviable position you have placed yourself. The native insignificance of the accuser renders his accusation harmless, but it cannot shield him from the consequences of his rash and presumptuous folly.
I am sorry to write with such severity—but, indeed, I confess that I have felt deep indignation that some of the most respected and distinguished agriculturists of the kingdom should have been insulted by such a novus homo as you are. I can scarcely trust myself to speak of the manner in which you have written of Professor Low and Mr Stephens. There are no two authors in the kingdom who have contributed more largely to advance the cause of agriculture, both as a science and an art, than these two gentlemen have done by their writings. They are universally respected. And yet you write of them with a puerile and vulgar rudeness, discreditable at once to your feelings as a gentleman, and to your position as a farmer. Your plucking out solitary expressions from Professor Low's Appeal to the Common Sense of the Country, and attaching a meaning to them which, in their original position, they did not bear, is sufficiently unscrupulous, and marks your candour as a controversialist. I believe nothing in your pamphlet has excited deeper disapprobation than the manner in which you have presumed to speak of Mr Stephens.
You entitle your last pamphlet High Farming Vindicated. High farming vindicated against the attacks of whom? A vindication presupposes an assault, and injury inflicted. By your titlepage, you affect to insinuate that high farming has been depreciated. In the name of the tenant-farmers of Scotland, I repel the insinuation. If by high farming you mean good farming, (that is, a liberal treatment of the soil and of stock, and an earnest application of the discoveries of science to the practice of husbandry,) I believe there never was a time when agriculturists were more alive to the advantages of high farming, or more desirous of adopting it, as far as their circumstances will allow. You seem foolishly to fancy that there is no high farming, saving at Auchness; and because the system there, as exhibited by you, has been subjected to some criticism, you rush to its defence, as if high farming were in the abstract attacked; and you indite a pamphlet, presumptuously entitling it High Farming Vindicated!
You set forth the Auchness system as the substitute for Protection. That crude and undigested fancy you appear to have been compelled to relinquish. But, indeed, there are specialties at Auchness which must ever render the system there incapable of being generally adopted. Not to speak of the enormous additional capital required by landlords and tenants—not to mention the liberal covenant and the low rent—there are the five hundred cartloads of sea-weed for manure; there is the memorable moss, not only fertile itself, but the cause of fertility to the adjacent fields, and benevolently submitting to transportation for the good of the commonwealth; there is the capricious potato, exciting suspicion and entailing loss everywhere else, but pouring immense treasures into the Auchness coffers; there is the proximity (two miles) to a seaport, "where produce can be shipped for Glasgow or Liverpool, and manure, &c., imported," (first pamphlet, page 8;) there is the fine climate, so favourable to the culture of green crops, and permitting wheat to be sown almost at any time during the winter months: these advantages, not one of which is enjoyed by Messrs Watson and Dudgeon, and which, in combination, I venture to affirm, do not exist on any other farm in the kingdom, must entirely prevent the general adoption of the Auchness model. The whole of your speculation on this subject is visionary, and the slightest reflection should have convinced you of this, as it has convinced every one else.