more than one year. What do you think may be the actual outlay per acre in money in carrying on the necessary operations of an average farm, irrespective of the price of grain? Why, not half a guinea per imperial acre; all other charges and expenses being regulated entirely and immediately by the prices of grain. The landlord is paid his rent generally in wheat. The labourers receive the bulk of their wages in the produce of the farm, grass for their cows, and specified quantities of the different kinds of grain. And it can make no difference to the farmer what may be the nominal value of the hay and oats raised by himself, and consumed by his horses and cattle. There are, it is true, the tolls and expenses in taking farm produce to market, some money wages to labourers, the accounts of the smith, the wright, and the saddler, besides the women and boys for hoeing and weeding, harvest wages, grass seeds, statute labour, and a trifling poor-rate. This is a goodly list; but I say, take all these items together, they do not, for ordinary management, exceed 10s. 6d. per imperial acre; and many of them would be materially modified, were any permanent change to take place in the price of food. I think I have said enough to prove that high prices are not so very necessary to the farmer as some are apt to imagine. (Cheers.) But I tell you more, that in 1836, when wheat was selling at 36s. per quarter, we did well; but that since then, in 1839, for example, with wheat at 72s. per quarter, just double what it was in 1836, farmers in East Lothian, myself amongst them, actually lost money. We did not grow grain sufficient for our rents and expenses; the additional quantity wanted must be made up; the higher the price the worse for the tenant. So much for the benefit of high prices to us tenant-farmers, who pay corn-law rents. Steady markets are of more Importance to us than high prices with violent fluctuations; but which will never be obtained till the market of Britain is thrown open to the world. Evidence was given before the Parliamentary committee of 1836, that the English farmers could not raise grain at the then prices which we in Scotland could do. But how could they not? From the almost universal want of leases, an effectual damper is put upon all attempts at improved management, for fear of additional rent. Amongst some of their antiquated practices, they still use the flail—that first remove from the patriarchal method of treading out corn with oxen, in place of the steam or even horse thrashing machine, which, by doing it so much cheaper, making the grain of better quality by superior condition, and by separating the grain more perfectly from the straw, would make the difference in the rent of a moderate-sized farm of at least 5s, per acre. The landowners there may, for aught I care, do what they like with their own but I affirm they have no right to complain, where, exposed to the bracing and healthful breeze, of free competition, when, by thus re-
