LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
MR. GLADSTONE ON PROFITABLE GARDENING.
[TO TRH EDITOR OF TUE " SPECTATOR...1
SIR,—In your paper of the 30th ult. you notice a speech by Mr. Gladstone, at a flower-show in H.awarden Park lately, in which he recommended the cultivation of fruits and flowers, and pointed out that we import yearly fruits such as we can grow ourselves to the amount of £2,200,000, and vegetables to the amount of £3,000,000; and he instanced a gentleman on the Hudson River, in the Northern States of America, who has an apple-garden of two hundred acres, and all of these apples are the direct de- scendants of English apples of a former generation, and the apples of this garden are annually sent back to England ; and he asks, ",If, at the high rate of wages paid for labour in America, it paid this gentleman to send us his apples, would it not pay English cottagers to grow such apples for the English markets themselves ?" Weeds, he added, robbed farmers and cottagers of more substance than all other robbers put together, and insisted on the profit which the culture of flowers for sale might bring, mentioning the many nosegay shops in London, and which provincial towns would soon emulate.
This advice, however, Mr. Gladstone is probably not aware, is more easily given than taken. He has overlooked the diffi- culties which, in this country, at the very outset, the cottagers or farmers have to encounter who would commence the cultivation of apples and flowers for sale, as he recommends. First, and most important of all, the tenure under which they hold the land they occupy interposes a formidable barrier to the culture he suggests. Cottagers for the most part, and many farmers, arc yearly tenants only, and even the nineteen years' lease, so common in Scotland, affords, as many farmers have found to their cost, a very inadequate security for carrying out improve- ments at their own cost, which, for the most part, they are left to do, if done at all. By the law of ,Scotland, all such improve- ments executed by a tenant are done at his own risk, and must be left by him, at the expiry of his lease, to the landlord, without being entitled to compensation for the same, to whatever extent they may have added to the letting value of the holding. Now, it must be obvious to any one, however little acquainted with cul- tivation, that to lay out an apple-garden of 200 acres, or even a flower-garden of an extent worth cultivating for sale—clear the ground of weeds, enrich it with manure, and enclose it, and stock it with apple-trees or flowers--must be attended with con- siderable expense; and to wait till these are in full bearing, itnplies rent-paying for some years without return ; all which requires an outlay—unromunerative, in the first instance —which few farmers and fewer cottagors could, under our existing land- laws, safely undertake. In the case of the gentleman on the Hudson River, the land presumably was his own, and the
security for his improvements was undoubted. Not so that of the enterprising cottager or farmer in this country for the im- provements he might make in order to carry out the culture re- commended by Mr. Gladstone. At the expiry of his lease, he would either be called upon to pay additional rent on his own improvements for a renewal of the lease, or, what more often
happens, leave the holding and is improvements to the land- lord to reap the benefit of them, on a relet to a new- tenant in the open market.
Culture such as Mr. Gladstone recommends can only be safely followed by the cottager or farmer when his improve- ments are secured to him by law, and not loft to be appropriated, as is the case at present, by landlords at their own discretion. Were it necessary, I could give many eases of improving tenants having had their improvements in this way confiscated to their landlords. Not long ago a noble Duke, in a pamphlet " On the Commercial Principles Applicable to the Hire of Land," vindi- cated this iniquitous practice on the fallacious plea that tenants enjoyed." abated rents," unknown even, his Grace assured his readers, `.` to the tenants themselves," and that as all leases were " improving leases," they covered all expenditure on the tenant's part, of whatever kind, whether made under the obliga- tions undertaken by him in the lease, or not !
Such being the law, and such its interpretation in high quarters, many farmers think it safer to put up with weeds and a jog-trot style of cultivation, than to improve and highly cultivate their farms ; and upon the whole, perhaps, they are not much mistaken. The injustice which the Land-laws inflict on improving tenants is the great stumbling-block to their improving their holdings ; and till this injustice is removed by wise legislation, it is useless to expect that cottagers or farmers will follow the well meant, it may be, but impracticable advice proffered by Mr. Gladstone at the Hawarden flower-show, on the occasion referred to.—I am, Sir, ex.,
Previous page
