PRICE AND PRODUCE OF LAND.

291

neglecting French Canadians, and the equally careless British and Irish emigrant settlers. This rich hop-land is worth £40 an acre.

At a distance of twenty or thirty miles from the market of Montreal, good land can be bought for £4 to £7 an acre; but the buildings are generally bad. If these happen to be good, the price is higher. The farms in this district usually run in long stripes, the breadth of 3 acres in front, and from 30 to 50 back, or from 90 to 150 acres in all. The average produce on the farms of the Canadian French is not more, as I was informed here, than 8 to 10 bushels of wheat per acre-and for this grain the soil is becoming poorer-and 20 bushels of oats. They grow little hay, except on the natural meadows, from which they reap 1 to 1 tons an acre. The system is to divide the farm in two, lengthwise, and to crop the one and pasture the other alternately, without sowing down-merely grazing the weeds that spring up.

This neglect of grass-seeds may be considered as a fair indication of a low state of practical husbandry, in nearly every country which is blessed with a moderately moist and temperate climate. It is far too general in North America-the Provinces and States alike.

Even

among our home-farmers, it is to be observed much more frequently than those persons who never leave the high-roads in their agricultural travels would readily believe.

Indeed, if we go a little out of the beaten track, we may find, either in England or Scotland, all the vices of American farming. Our home-farmers, indeed, may be said to be the parents of them all. We have among us still numberless farmers of the old school, possessed of deep-rooted prejudices, who refuse to advance and change their methods. It is chiefly such men who, during the last twenty or thirty years, while those who

292

INTEREST OF THE CLERGY.

advanced with the times were generally prosperous, have, one by one, been driven from their farms, and forced to emigrate. Having sacrificed themselves at home to their prejudices, they bear them religiously beyond the Atlantic, and transmit them as heir-looms to their descendants. The changes in our corn-laws will not, it is to be hoped, now send out any of our better men.

With such men, holding at least a considerable share of the land, it is not surprising that bad farming should be found in North America, even among the AngloSaxon race; and if improvements are introduced slowly among us, they cannot be expected to advance with a less languid step among them.

It is believed that the introduction of British settlers into Lower Canada would improve the rural industry of the French population; and, in so far as the example of a more patient and energetic blood goes, this might possibly be the case. But, in addition to the unwillingness which the British Protestant emigrant feels to place himself in the midst of a people who speak a different tongue, and belong to a different religious denomination, there is another obstacle to this admixture of races, arising out of the law of tithes, of which I was not aware until my friends explained it to me here to-day.

Before the British conquest, the Roman Catholic clergy were, by law, entitled to the tithes of all landone twenty-sixth part of the produce being the legal due of the priest of the parish. But by what is called, I believe, the Quebec Act, they are now permitted to demand tithe of persons of their own persuasion only, Protestants being exempt. Hence, every transfer of land from a Roman Catholic to a Protestant proprietor, is a money-loss to the Romish Church, and a money-inducement is held out to the priest of the place

*

See, for instance, the state of farming in Lancashire even now.— Royal Agricultural Journal, vol. x., part 1.

CANADIAN THORN-HEDGES.

293

to throw obstacles in the way of such transfers. This is a temptation by which the best of men among the Roman Catholic clergy may be insensibly biassed, and to which the law ought not to expose them.

Fruit, and especially apples, grow well on the lowlying black land I visited to-day; and orchards are numerous around Montreal. At Mr Penner's, I saw some fine apple-trees, and gathered some excellent fruit. Among other eatable varieties, the pomme grise is one which is highly esteemed as a good bearer and of high flavour. Some of the valuable rennets also, such as the large white Canadian, called also the large English rennet, are said to be of Canadian origin. Besides table fruit, cider-apples also are grown; and in addition to those of his own orchard, Mr Penner buys and crushes those of the neighbouring orchards.

For the first time in Canada, I saw here some hedgerows of our English thorn, Crataegus oxyacantha. The mice are said to be their greatest enemies. When the snow is on the ground, they often destroy this and other valuable trees, by gnawing off the bark for food-as hares and rabbits, in severe winters, do with us. I saw also some very nice and well-kept fences of the American thorn-the Crataegus crus-galli, or cockspur thorn, I believe. No other objection was stated to the general introduction of these hedges, except the trouble and expense of keeping them in repair.

Before leaving Mr Penner's farm, I ought to mention, in connection with the high-manuring of his hop-lands, that he has a bone-mill upon his farm-that there is another at Montreal; but that, as I was informed, scarcely any true Canadian has as yet seriously thought

* In the State of New York, four native species of thorn are known, of which this is considered the best suited for hedges, and is most frequently employed for this purpose. I am not aware if all these species are natives of Canada also.

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DIFFERENCE OF INTEREST BETWEEN

of employing such a thing as bones, even for the manuring of his worn-out wheat-lands.

I returned from Lachine, by the way of the valley— apparently an old channel of the St Lawrence, or of the Ottawa-along which the ship-canal and the railway have been conducted. There is rich flat meadow-land in the bottom of the valley, only partially drained; and some tracts of rich alluvial soil, dry enough to be submitted to arable culture, and productive of excellent crops. The upland, also, is generally of good quality, and well-cultivated farms are not unfrequent. On one of these I met with a warm and kind reception from Mr Evans, the Secretary of the Lower Canada Agricultural Society, editor of their Journal and Transactions, and the author of a valuable treatise on agriculture, adapted to the climate and productions of Canada. Both on this and on subsequent occasions, I was indebted to the kindness and attention of Mr Evans, and was obliged to him for much valuable information.

Sept. 25.-Among other persons whom it gave me pleasure to visit this morning was M. Morin, President of the Legislative Assembly, and of the Lower Canada Agricultural Society; and M. Villeneuve, Principal of the Roman Catholic college. Both of these gentlemen expressed a strong desire to promote the introduction of a better system of practical agriculture among the inhabitants of Lower Canada; and no other kind of instruction-I may say, from all I afterwards saw, no other gift which can be bestowed upon this people-seems likely to be productive of more material good to the province.

Looking at the relation which an established clergy bears to the agriculture of a country, in one of the aspects in which it naturally presents itself, it would appear as if no class of men ought to be more anxious to promote agricultural improvement, to remove obstacles out of its way, and to diffuse that kind of knowledge by which

THE TITHE-OWNER AND TITHE-PAYER.

295

it is to be most rapidly advanced. Entitled in most countries to a certain fixed share of the produce of the land, the larger that produce can be made, the greater the revenue the clergy must yearly receive. And yet experience seems to show that it is precisely when, as in Scotland, the established clergy have the least interest in the amount of produce yielded by the land, that agricultural improvement has most progressed; while it has remained most backward, also, in those Roman Catholic countries in which their interest has remained the greatest. Every one, in fact, knows how the tithe question has impeded rural improvement in countless localities, even in England; and how the tithe-commutation measure has been introduced, in the hope of removing the obstacles it presented, not more to rural peace than to rural progress.

It is not difficult to understand how such obstacles should actually arise out of what, at first sight, appears likely to promote agricultural improvement; how a diversity of interest should exist between the cultivator and the tithe-collector; and how human nature should stubbornly, though foolishly, refuse to adopt new methods which would be more profitable to the farmer himself, simply because they would at the same time be a source of profit to another, who incurs none of the additional labour, anxiety, or expense.

There is, however, an indirect method by which improvements are certain to be brought about-slowly perhaps at first, but largely and generally in the end. This method is the general diffusion of knowledge bearing upon the practice of agriculture. It is not by prescribing new methods to old men-by staking our chances of success on the hope of overcoming the prejudices of the most prejudiced class of society. It is by instilling into young and unprejudiced minds the principles according to which all rural practice ought to be