Bushels.
55 acres wheat, 38 bushels per acre,2090
Off seed,168
1922at4s.4d.£41688
45 acres wheat, additional,1710
Off seed,135
1575at4s.4d.34150
45 acres additional green crop, at £6, 11s. 6d. nett profit,295176
1 acre Italian ryegrass, per balance-sheet,500
90 acres green crop, per balance-sheet,88460
Income,£1942172
Expenditure, as per balance-sheet,1851100
Income at present rent,9172
But a rent of 32s. per acre adds to the expenditure,15600
Tenant's loss,£641210

But even yet we are allowing you advantages which are inadmissible. The supposititious price put upon the cattle, so far beyond the current profit, ought to be largely reduced, and an average of 38 bushels wheat over 100 acres, a portion of these being moss, is certainly much too high. Nevertheless, giving you the benefit of these unusual demands, and the advantages of a superior climate, admirable accommodation, and an annual bonus of 500 loads of sea-weed, it appears, that when your new mode of farming Auchness (the potato being abandoned) is put to the test, that instead of having a remuneration of £718, 6s., Mr M'Culloch loses £64, 12s. 10d. Shuffle the land as you please—crop it as you please—speculate as wildly as you please on the patience and powers of the soil, and grant the most perfect success to attend your speculations, yet it is as certain as arithmetic can make it, that, the moment you depart from the potato culture, the pecuniary marvels at Auchness wholly vanish. It was rash to throw down the gauntlet as you have done. You ought to have "stuck to your text," (the potato,)—as long as the text will stick to you. According to your new mode of arranging the culture at Auchness, there must annually, on a farm of 260 acres, be 100 acres wheat, and 110 acres green crop. How long the land will endure this remains to be proved. I have not a shadow of a doubt that not very many years would elapse before the reduced quantity of wheat per acre, and the reduced value of the turnip crop, would place the factor at Auchness in a worse category than Messrs Watson and Dudgeon; and that he would awake to the conviction that, as he has found there is something in the potato rot, so there may be something, too, in a rotation of crops.

Still, upon your new hypothesis, at the present rent, there would be a margin of profit. Let us examine into this matter somewhat more narrowly. "Deducting Mr M'Culloch's 92 acres of potatoes, 55 acres of wheat, and 22 acres of oats, we have 91 acres left; 50 of which are in turnips, and 41 in clover and grass. The nett produce yielded by the stock fed on these 91 acres, (besides the keep of the farm-horses,) this very year, in the midst of all this depression, will not be less (after deducting purchased food) than £600, which is equal to £6, 11s. 6d. an acre, besides the valuable stock of manure which has, at the same time, been accumulated," (p. 12.) In this statement there are sundry slips of the memory. If the keep of the horses at Auchness consisted solely of turnips and the succulent clover, as you seem to say, they must be peculiarly constituted animals, and endowed with most singular peristaltic powers. On such liquescent diet they might, perhaps, at one and the same time, work their work, and thoroughly manure the fields. There would be some difficulty in so timing the conjoined operations, one would think, as to avoid waste as well as danger. Mr Huxtable's pigs, I fancy, would be pleasant and savoury company compared to the Auchness horses. However, you forget that, by the 17th January last, these horses had consumed 1100 bushels of oats, and that £105 worth more of oats had been bought to supply their wants, and those of the servants. (See Auchness Balance-sheet, pp. 46, 47.) Moreover, the horses must surely have been allowed the larger proportion of the oat-straw, (there is no hay,) if not the whole of it. The feeding-stock had the whole straw and chaff grown upon the farm, with the exception of what fell to the share of the horses: and thus £600 was not the nett produce of these 91 acres of green crop, but along with that of the greater part of the fodder grown upon the farm. Again, you deduct "the purchased food;" but why not deduct the purchased manures, before you speak of "the nett produce yielded by the stock?" Still, with these qualifications, £6, 11s. 6d. per acre, for the green crop and fodder, is a remarkable profit; so remarkable for 1849-50, in my estimation, as to be unparalleled. Let us look at the memorable Balance-sheet for a little: 44 cattle bought in June are sold out at £5, 5s. of an advance per head; 208 wethers are sold at 9s. per head advance;—all this before 17th January last. We are not told what the animals were bought in at. We are not told what they brought per stone. Mystery envelops the whole transaction, and we are left to grope and guess at the mode in which this remarkable result was arrived at. An average of £5, 5s. per head upon 44 cattle, and of 9s. per head upon 208 wethers, is so extraordinary a profit in these times, that I doubt if two other agriculturists in the island could record a similar experience. The fact is, that everywhere the elements of incredibility are apparent on this part of the Auchness Balance-sheet. None would question it more lustily than Mr Mechi. Bullocks which cost him £249 gave him a profit of £37, and sheep which cost him £332 a profit of £95, during the past season! No wonder that he describes bullocks as "ungrateful fellows;" and that in spite of Porcius and his Attic salt he is in love with the Rector's pigs. But indeed Mechi seems to differ with you toto cælo. So far from advocating, along with you, a more extensive cultivation of green crops, he is "quite satisfied that they must be made secondary and subservient to the larger consumption of corn or cake."—(See his live-stock account for 1849, of 2d Feb. in Gardeners' Chronicle.) How are such "discordant utterances" to be reconciled? Methinks you high-farming gentlemen should agree more nearly with one another, before you dictate so dogmatically to others. Certain it is that the result at Auchness could not arise from the exquisite quality of the animals; for it is demonstrable that oxen and wethers, as fine and fat as any ever fed there, or as ever were led to the shambles, have this season produced to their owners no such profit. Had 8 or 10 of the 44 cattle brought such a profit, the thing would have been intelligible. It is the immense profit per head, over such a lot of cattle and sheep, that has excited the universal scepticism. But if we remember that these 44 cattle may have been fed during a period of seven months, then the profit per head is more intelligible. But if so, of how many months does the agricultural year at Auchness consist? Looking at the two Balance-sheets rendered, they seem to run into one another in an inextricable fashion; and I suspect that, in a cycle of three or four years, one year with its profits will have disappeared and been absorbed. If this does not explain the mystery, we must suppose that the stock was bought in at an unusually favourable rate, and that they were sold out fat, at a larger sum per stone than any other feeder has got. This would indicate that the factor at Auchness is a market-man of unrivalled dexterity—the luckiest wight in driving a bargain that ever handled nowt. In fact, his good luck here seems as singular as it was in the matter of the moss and its potatoes. But what has this to do with high farming? Is the success of agriculture to depend upon happy accidents, and the possession of a genius for marketing operations unrivalled and unapproachable?

But something more astonishing remains. Look at this item of income,—"86 cattle in course of feeding, at £5, 5s. per head advance." The cattle are not fed—they are in course of feeding. They are not sold—no price has been offered for them. They may be "decimated" by the murrain; prices may fall—they have fallen; the factor's good luck as a seller may leave him; but the sanguine Mr M'Culloch has resolved that the profit per head shall be £5, 5s., and down he puts to the income side of the balance-sheet the neat aditament of £451, 10s. He has 400 tons of potatoes; they may perish in the pits, as in many places they are doing. It matters not. Mr M'Culloch has made up his mind that they are worth £3 per ton, and he transfers to his profits, as received, the sum of £1200. We wonder if the factor's books are kept in the same fashion as the farm books? If so, they must contain some pleasant entries—such as, A. B.'s rent, £1200—not paid—intended to be paid—gave him a discharge in full. Why, the balance-sheet at Auchness is avowedly supposititious—a magnificent Californian fiction. Mr M'Culloch seems one of those blessed visionaries who riot in the prospect of profits to be realised, and whose strong imagination gives existence and reality to the possibilities of ideal gain. Upon the authority of its framer, we see now that the Auchness balance-sheet is professedly pictorial and factitious; and it is upon this stable foundation that the farmers of Britain are asked to invest more capital in their business, and to practise the Auchness mode of husbandry. Are you and Mr M'Culloch in earnest? I can scarcely believe it. Cicero tells us that one augur meeting another could scarcely help smiling; and one can scarcely help thinking that you and Mr M'Culloch must have many a quiet laugh at the boundless gullibility of the Free-trade press and the Free-trade proprietors, swallowing your high farming as the substitute for Protection, and the remedy for the sufferings entailed on the kingdom by Free-trade legislation.

You tell us, however, that you have "plenty more" of as profitable instances of high farming, "for the instruction of Messrs Dudgeon and Watson, and the edification of the author of the Book of the Farm. From Ireland even, I could instance a small farm within my own knowledge, where, by the practice of house-feeding, an annual return, in dairy produce, of at least £400 is obtained from less than 60 imperial acres;" (p. 11.) When, in your first pamphlet, (see prefatory note, fifth edition,) you wrote that you had selected for exhibition a single example in the case of Auchness, implying that you had many more such cases to pick and choose from, I confess that I felt, at the time, that the statement was disingenuous. I utterly deny that you can produce one other case similar to Auchness, and that can parallel it in its advantages and in its profits, unless, indeed its balance-sheet is framed after the Auchness model. If you have plenty more such cases, why not mention them? Why keep them secret—a terra incognita—when the agricultural world is panting for information? You are like the cruel alchemist who discovered the philosopher's stone, but who, in sulky obstinacy, resolved to die without divulging the invaluable secret, and did so accordingly. Your present vaunt, I am inclined to look upon as idle braggadocio. In your gallop through Ireland, a case is reported to you of £400 being obtained from less than 60 acres in dairy produce. Are you quite sure that this was not a bit of blarney dropped into your credulous ear? It is not in the nature of an Irishman to refrain from "humbugging a Saxon bosthoon;" and that you were sometimes crammed and humbugged by the "wild Irish," is undeniable. (See Dublin Evening Mail of 6th February last.) £400 was the annual return: you do not tell us what was the annual expenditure. The profit, whatever it might be, was only for one year. And it is by such isolated, unsupported, and apocryphal illustrations, that you now vindicate your high farming so called! Individual instances of extraordinary profit are within the knowledge of every farmer. In two several cases, I have known £100 sterling being got for one acre of carrots. The 260 acres at Auchness, at this rate, would give a grand annual result of £26,000. There is a balance-sheet for you!—there is a brave speculation. Try it, and never fear the worm.

In the mean time, there is only the one solitary case of Auchness which you have exhibited, and on this narrow basis you build your theory, and denounce all who question its authenticity, and who, if accepted as given, deny its fitness for universal adoption. You have "plenty more," you say, but, with a relentless taciturnity, you decline to tell us where they are to be found. And thus you fancy that you have met and overthrown the agricultural statistics published by Blackwood in January last. You misunderstand or misrepresent the value of these statistics. Blackwood's statistics are applicable to the farming of the districts to which they severally refer, and not for one, but for the average of years of an ordinary lease, and under existing covenants. If they had been the literal results and experience of the reporters on their own farms, as you, with reckless inattention, persist in representing them all to be, they would have been of little value, and they never could have been attested as they have been; and, on the other hand, they would have possessed as little value had they not been drawn up from the results of their own experience and practical knowledge. They have all the force of those tabular accounts of sales which mercantile men are in the habit of transmitting to their correspondents—containing not the exact dealings of any one merchant, which would be in a great measure useless, but communicating the actual state of the existing market. The tables in Blackwood were not intended to exhibit generally the highest ascertained capabilities of the best qualities of the soil, not to depict "the possible of agricultural development;" but to show how much agricultural knowledge, capital, and skill had actually accomplished on average soils, in an average of years. In this very fact consisted the value of their results: otherwise, they never could have proved the effects of Free Trade on Scottish agriculture generally. And then, the respective reports in Blackwood are examined by others in the same districts. The examinators—gentlemen of known capacity and undoubted honour—having tested the reports by their own knowledge and experience, certify them as correct. We need not be surprised at the vast importance which has been attached to Blackwood's statistics, and at the countless and futile attempts which have been made, by those hostile to the interests of British agriculture, to contradict and deny their accuracy. How very different is your case! You give a solitary instance of a farm farmed by the factor of the estate, under a covenant so unboundedly liberal that it leaves the tenant to do anything he pleases, if he pays a moderate, in fact, a low rent for the ground. The lease was probably drawn by the factor himself; and, if it were not, the farmer could not wish it more liberal and indulgent. The relative position of the parties throws suspicion and doubt upon the whole case. Every one feels this. When the proprietor expended so large a sum of money in improving the farm of Auchness—receiving no rise of rent, but bare interest for his outlay—did he not mean to make it a suitable residence for his factor, and to constitute it a kind of experimental farm in the district? In the liberal covenant, is the factor's remuneration in part not included? Is the Auchness liberal covenant the exception, and not the rule, amongst the tenant-farmers of Wigtonshire? And then, while many have borne their testimony to the excellence of the crops, and to the management of the stock, not one has certiorated the Auchness balance-sheet, but yourself. In this branch of the case you are a testis singularis. You seem to hint that Mr Stephens might certify to your competency as a witness. But that gentleman maintains an ominous silence. The whole rests upon your ipse dixit. And when the inquirer drops a gentle surmise, you turn round in a rage, and storm and stamp, proclaiming, at the top of your voice, "I am Sir Oracle, and when I ope my lips let no dog bark."

With regard to Blackwood's statistics, you again and again admit their unchallengeable correctness. Their "facts," you say, "are too well vouched to be disputed; they will be admitted at once by any candid mind," (p. 5.) If it be so, then, in their position, the conclusion from the facts is inevitable. When you ask them to meet the altered times by growing wheat every year on the same ground—or, at least, biennially, over nearly the half of their farm—and by extending their quantity of green crop, and feeding off six times the quantity of stock, their answer is, that they cannot and dare not. The ordinary conditions of a lease, and the principles of any known system of rotation, are set at utter defiance at Auchness. When the moss sickens of the perpetual potato, its rebellion is punished by scarification. It is skinned of its cuticle to the depth of "a few inches," which is transported to the red-land fields, (p. 7, first pamph.) If it does not mend its manners, the invaluable moss will, after a period, disappear bodily, and the rent of the generous Col. M'Douall will be left to repose on the "lower silurian formation."

Blackwood's farmers are tied up by leases which they dare not violate—under penalties which the Auchness profits would not cover—and they have no accommodation for feeding the enormous quantity of stock which you prescribe for them. But if they could farm their land as they please, I question much if they would think it expedient to adopt the incessant cropping and the excessive stirring and stimulating of the soil by enormous and rapidly renewed doses of manure, as exemplified at Auchness. This system does admirably for a few years on untried soil, having all its rude virgin vigour in it, like the Auchness farm, when it came into the hands of Mr M'Culloch. But, after a certain time, the infallible result, as far as the cereals are concerned, is a mass of rank vegetation and miserable grain, in respect both of quantity and weight. When the ultimate profits of the nineteen years' lease are regarded, and the desire to grow for a series of years true, and, at the same time, prolific corn crops is entertained, a prudent and skilful agriculturist may well pause before he plunges into the Auchness experiment. Mr M'Culloch may find, ere long, that his vexed and wearied land will demand more rest and repose than Mr Caird, by his further illustrations of high farming, would give it.

Nor is this all. Messrs Watson and Dudgeon, unlike Mr M'Culloch, are breeders of stock as well as feeders. Mr Watson, particularly, is one of the most eminent breeders in the kingdom. Although you may never have heard of them, his polled Angusshire cattle are somewhat celebrated. They have excited universal admiration over all the island, on the pastures at Windsor Castle, in Smithfield, and in the show-yards of the Highland and Agricultural Society. Most probably Mr Watson, like most men who have devoted much money and time to the improvement of our various breeds of stock, may not have profited largely by his enterprise: but who, yourself excepted, can doubt that he has, in this department, conferred more important benefits on the agriculture of the kingdom than a hundred such experiments as the Auchness potato culture can possibly effect? But if there is a breeding stock upon a farm, then the stock-feeding system, to the extent that is carried on at Auchness, is impossible. The young stock which are to be bred from, if they are to have healthy and sound constitutions, must be allowed the range of the open field for many months in the year. You boast of the stock fed at Auchness; I venture to say that more admirable specimens of cattle and sheep can be produced at Keillor or Spylaw—animals of more exquisite symmetry, size, and quality—than Mr M'Culloch ever has exhibited, or ever will exhibit, if he adheres to his present system. Cattle must be bred by some other party, or the Auchness feeding-system must stop for want of animals. Mr M'Culloch subsists upon the breeders of the country. He requires several farms, of the same extent as his own, to supply him with animals. It is highly unwise of you to urge upon this class the adoption of a different system, for, without their aid, there would be empty stalls at Auchness.

But in the production of grain you try to demonstrate that Messrs Watson, Dudgeon, and Gibson have sadly degenerated from their predecessors. In proof of this, you adduce the evidence of Messrs Brodie, East-Lothian, and Turnbull, South Belton, Dunbar, as given before a committee of the House of Commons, and quoted in the Farmer's Magazine for 1814. You have given, however, a partial and one-sided sample of the evidence taken by this Parliamentary Committee. There are five gentlemen who gave evidence regarding the average produce of wheat per acre, two of whom only depone to the quantities of oats and barley grown per acre. It is in the article of wheat alone that the evidence can enable us satisfactorily to ascertain whether, since 1814, there has been an agricultural progress or an agricultural declension. Five of the agricultural tables in Blackwood state the average produce of wheat. Wheat is the great staple article of the nation's farinaceous food—that grain upon which the Free-traders repose all their calculations, and to the selection of which you cannot object, as it is the only grain you grow at Auchness for the people. Well, let us put the five agriculturists quoted by Blackwood in juxtaposition with the five agriculturists whose evidence appears in the Parliamentary Report of 26th July 1814.