popularity, and all our advices and remonstrances on the subject were
rejected with disdain. Universal ruin has followed these schemes, and
the unfortunate dupes are left to mourn their loss. Nothing is more
specious than a plan of earning an independent livelihood by
cultivating a few acres of land; but, practically, it is open to some
serious drawbacks. First, the cultivator requires to be skilled in
husbandry, and of a bodily frame to endure the fatigue of constant
out-door labour. Second, his land must be tolerably good, and situated
under a good climate. Third, the land must be close to a market,
otherwise the produce cannot be disposed of. The cultivation of a
small bit of land is in reality a kind of gardening. No horse-labour
can be employed; all is to be done by the spade. It may be possible,
therefore, to make a livelihood near a large town, where anything that
is produced--milk and butter included--will find a ready market at no
cost of transport; but in other circumstances the thing is almost
hopeless. It is a notorious fact, that the most wretched of the rural
population of this country are small cultivators, even if the land
costs next to nothing. We are aware that the small-farm system is more
successful in Belgium and Lombardy. On the reasons for this, it is
here needless to enter. We take the examples offered in Great Britain,
where it has never come up to the expectations of philanthropists.

The purchase of forty-shilling freeholds has lately been put forward
as a method of investing money by the working-classes. It is beyond
our province to speak of the political aims of this form of
investment. We can recognise a certain good in giving to a working-man
the feeling, that he is the proprietor of a house or small portion of
land yielding (along with the franchise in England) a rent of forty
shillings per annum; but, at the same time, we recognise a
corresponding evil, and we should be shrinking from our duty if we did