That agricultural improvement is extending with very rapid strides in
many parts of Ireland, is evident to all who have had an opportunity of
observing the country; the best proof of which is, perhaps, that our
agricultural exports have been greatly increased for some years past,
whilst during the same period the population has been augmented to a
degree unprecedented in any of the _old_ countries of the world. That our
exporting food to such an extent is a proof of the wealth or happiness of
those who produce it, may well admit of doubt, otherwise the miserable
serfs of Russia, Poland, and other corn-growing countries, would be
entitled to rank higher in the scale of happiness than the English
farmers, who are not able to raise sufficient food for their own country!
But notwithstanding the pleasing proofs of improvements in farming
which meet the eye of the tourist in various parts of the country, and
particularly in the north, he will in too many places find it difficult
to imagine anything worse either in the farms, the habitations, the
cattle, or the implements, even should he extend the retrospect to a
period ever so remote.
Agricultural schools, with even a single acre of land attached, and
worked by the elder boys on a system of rotation adapted to the ground
and to the district in which it happened to be situated, would soon
effect a wonderful reformation in the farming of the country. That such
would be the happy result, is self-evident; and we are strengthened in
our conviction by having witnessed in very many instances the good effect
of the agricultural education imparted at Templemoyle, in the county of
Londonderry. Entertaining these views, we need hardly say how much we
were gratified by a visit to one of these schools a short time since,
situated in a remote and secluded part of the county of Donegal. Here,
on the estate of Sir Charles Styles, Bart., and under the direction of
his efficient agent, whose anxiety and exertions towards bettering the
condition of the poor of this county are well known and appreciated, we
found a small piece of ground being laid out into five divisions, as an
example of the five-course rotation suited to that part of the country;
in the school-room were suspended tables, exhibiting at one view, plain,
practical instructions as to the season for performing the different work
on the farm; the quantity and best kind of seeds to be sown; and, in one
word, the _modus operandi_, according to the most improved practice; and
the proficiency of many of the boys, not only in agriculture, but in
levelling and surveying, was most creditable. We cannot, perhaps, better
second the exertions of Captain Kennedy and other philanthropists engaged
in the regeneration of their country, than by bringing under the notice
of the public an instance of the successful working of the system we have
here advocated.
The undrained fenceless farm, with its many-angled small fields and
crooked ridges, exhausted to the last degree by successive corn crops, is
still but too general; and the habitations, notwithstanding the marked
improvement in their appearance in many places, in many others accord
but too faithfully with the melancholy picture that has been drawn of
them by so many observers--“walls decayed, roofs bent and sunken, thatch
tattered, no windows, no chimneys; the turf-smoke rolling slowly from the
doors, or seeking its way through the chinks and crevices innumerable
with which these hovels abound. The appearance of the inmates corresponds
with that of the miserable tenements--ill clad, squalid, haggard,
listless and idle, in every countenance discontent strongly marked,
and in some an expression akin to despair.” Such is the description
given by Mr Weld in his Statistical Survey of Roscommon, taken in 1831.
One epithet in that accurate description requires to be qualified to
those who have not seen the interesting and highly valuable work from
which it is taken. The poor of Elphin were “idle,” not of choice, but
because the employment which offered itself in the wastes and sites for
manufactories with which he describes the country to abound, were not
rendered available; and throughout the country, wherever idleness and
its concomitant misery are observable, there also it will be found that
these evils are traceable to a want of sympathy and exertion on the
part of the owners of the soil; for abundantly remunerating employment
abounds in every part of the country. We cannot resist, even at the
risk of extending this paper beyond the limits which we had at first
proposed to ourselves, the temptation to bring forward an instance of
that industry which we have never seen wanting when the inducement or
even the possibility of exercising it with effect was present, afforded
too by these same “idle” people of Elphin, as recorded in the same
work. “Girls,” observes Mr Weld, “amongst whom some were really pretty
and delicate, and of an age and frame of body seemingly but ill-suited
to the task, sought a precarious and hard-earned livelihood in hawking
turf about the town in cleaves, which they had carried on their backs
from the bog, distant about two miles. The ordinary weight of one of
these cleaves was three stones, or forty-two pounds, sometimes more. The
price _asked_ for two cleaves was only 3½d, but as demands of this kind
ordinarily exceed the selling price, 1½d might probably be set down as
the utmost price of a single cleave; from this was to be deducted the
price of the turf at the bog, the small surplus being all the gains for
bearing this heavy burden, mostly up hill, and afterwards hawking it from
house to house.” The cattle in the demesnes of the gentry and on dairy
farms have in like manner been greatly improved within a few years, but
amongst the small farmers the description of stock is in many places bad
in the extreme; improvement in this branch of economy cannot take place,
however, except as the consequence of an improved system of farming.
As a powerful means of extending a knowledge of improved husbandry,
if properly exercised, we have regarded since their establishment the
National Schools of Ireland.
A cotemporary says, “The agriculture of Bavaria has experienced a great
improvement in consequence of the system of national education which
has been adopted, and by the teaching of agriculture and gardening both
by books and examples in the schools. One of the first consequences
was an improved rotation of crops. Almost the whole of the details of
agricultural improvement in Bavaria have originated with M. Hazzi, an
agricultural writer, and editor of an agricultural journal in Munich.
The activity and patriotic benevolence of this gentleman are beyond
all praise. It was chiefly through his exertions that a piece of ground
was added to every parochial school in Bavaria, to be cultivated by the
scholars in their leisure hours, under the direction of the master.
In these schools, Hazzi’s Catechism of Gardening, of Agriculture, of
Domestic Economy and Cookery, of Forest Culture, of Orchard Culture,
and others, all small duodecimo volumes with woodcuts, sold at about
fourpence each, are taught to all the boys; and those of Gardening, the
Management of Silk Worms, and Domestic Economy, to the girls. Since these
schools have come into action, an entirely new generation of cultivators
has arisen; and the consequence is, that agriculture in Bavaria, and
especially what may be called cottage agriculture and economy, is, as far
as we are able to judge, carried to a higher degree of perfection than
it is any where else in the central states of Germany; at all events, we
can affirm that we never saw finer crops of drilled Swedish and common
turnips, or finer surfaces of young clover, than we observed along the
road sides in October and November 1828. The fences also were generally
in perfect order, and a degree of neatness appeared about the cottages
which is far from common either in France or Germany. These remarks are
not the results of observations made, as is frequently the case, from
the cabriolet of a public diligence, but from deliberate inspection. The
result of the whole of the information procured, and of the observations
made, is, that we think the inhabitants of Bavaria promise soon to be, if
they are not already, among the happiest people in Germany.”