faut mourir, says the first speaker; il faut vivre, says the second; il faut tenir un juste milieu, says the third. There is no juste milieu for the Benchers. The life or death, prosperity or decline, of the profession is in their hands. Hitherto, there has been no disposition to make them answerable for the habits of indifference and neglect which they have inherited from a long line of predecessors; and the utmost that has been proposed is to name a body of Commissioners, comprising a certain number of officers of state and other unprofessional members, and empower these to frame a complete system of Legal Education and place the Inns themselves on a fixed and intelligible footing. Even this might be rendered unnecessary by promptness, openness, and decision; by a fair avowal that every thing which ought to have been done has been left undone, followed by conclusive proofs of an earnest unaffected wish to make the bar all it might yet become, if the ordinary care bestowed in keeping up the tone and purifying the ranks of other learned professions, were bestowed upon it. But one thing, we repeat, is quite clear. If the reform does not come from within, it will come from without; and it is absurd to suppose that inquiry can be fenced off again, as it was fenced off fourteen years ago, by talking of voluntary societies, private property, and irresponsible power. It is now established beyond all question, that the governing bodies of these establishments are to all intents and purposes trustees for the public; and as such the legislature will deal with them.

Space permitting, we should be glad to say a few words on the establishment of a Council of Discipline: the tendency of the political influence exercised by the legal profession,—a topic well treated by M. de Tocqueville; the effect of what is called the indiscriminate defence of right and wrong on morals and modes of thinking; the degree of license to be taken or accorded in this respect, as well as in the examination of witnesses and in personal comments; with some other topics closely connected with the position, character and prospects of the profession. But these topics may be safely postponed; for we have pointed out the only effective mode of saving the Bar from sinking lower and lower in public estimation, till society begins to suffer very seriously from its decline. The reformer must begin at the fountain-head; he must purify the current from its source; he must educate, elevate, liberalise, and refine the administrators of the law; and all thinking men-making a due allowance for human weakness—will soon cease to murmur (as many such do now) at the administration of it.

ART. V.-1. The Journal of Agriculture, and the Transactions of the Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland. Published Quarterly. New Series. From July 1843 to October 1846. 8vo. Edinburgh and London,

2. The Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England. From January 1839 to September 1846. 8vo. London.

THER

HERE are three classes of men whose several opinions are at present more or less generally influential, in reference to the practical agriculture of the country.

The statesman, and the independent thinker, looking at the rapid increase of our population, which no human means seem able to retard, are apprehensive that, in its progress, it may outstrip the increasing productiveness of the land. This class is desirous, therefore, of forwarding our agricultural industry in every available way, and will knowingly favour no measures likely to hinder or delay its progress.

Mercantile and Commercial men, again, under the same apprehension, look forward to a constantly increasing price of corn, should the people be constrained to buy from the home-grower only; and this fear has not been without its weight in leading to the recent alterations in the corn-laws.

The agricultural body, on the other hand, allege that the universal competition they are now exposed to, will lower the average price of corn so much as to render home-farming unprofitable to throw much land out of arable culture to make us dependent upon foreign countries for our food; and in the event of a war, to expose the mass of the people to the horrors of a possible famine.

There appear good grounds, no doubt, to the minds of thosewho entertain them, for each of these three sets of opinions. A calm review, however, of the actual state, and of the capabilities of British agriculture, will go far, we think, to remove the apprehensions of each party, and to renew the confidence of all in the agricultural resources of the country in its ability to grow food for its increasing population, and at a price which shall make foreign competition comparatively harmless.

All important fiseal changes involve or necessarily cause some new adjustments of the social machine. To such adjustments our free-trade measures will give rise; but though some of the wheels may probably, by these adjustments, be caused to move more quickly, there is no risk, we think, of any of them being seriously injured or permanently displaced.

Our reasons for this opinion will be brought out more clearly if we inquire what British agriculture has done during the last twenty years?-what it is at present doing ?and what in future it may hope to effect?

1. What has British agriculture done 2 Upon the first point, considered by itself, it will be unnecessary to enter into much detail. During the heats of party contention, many things have been said against the agricultural body of the slowness of their progress of their hostility to improvement, &c., which, though true of individuals or of particular districts, could not with justice be said of the entire agricultural class, or of the surface of the country as a whole. It is only fair to allow, what the agricultural writers of all Europe and of America unanimously testify, that British agriculture, taken generally, has made greater progress during the last half century than that of any other country in the world; and that, to learn what can be made by art of soils which nature seems to have neglected, Great Britain, and especially its northern parts, must be visited and curiously examined by the aid of an instructed eye.

There are few full-grown men amongst ourselves, whose familiarity with some one agricultural district or another will not enable them to judge of the nature and extent of this improvement, in particular localities; but one fact places it as a general, truth almost beyond dispute. The population of our Islands has largely increased during the last twenty years; and though, in occasional seasons, the quantity of foreign corn imported has also been greatly augmented, yet the average importation up to last year, when the potatoes began to fail us, was little greater than it was twenty years ago. We do not care to establish this facts by any reference to numbers. We the more willingly concede to British agriculture the honour and credit of such a rapid and constant progression, because it is full of promise to the country, both in regard to the future capabilities of the soil, and to the future energy of those who cultivate it.. All reference to the past, indeed, is of little moment, except as an argument for the future; and habits of improvement acquired in former years cannot be at once given up. We pass from this point, therefore; and inquire,

1

!

2. What is now doing? Are the energies of the present holders of the land still exerted, as in past years, in further de veloping its resources ? To. satisfy our readers upon this point, we ask them to accompany us in a brief agricultural tour of the Island.

From the extreme northern end of Britain-from within the

walls of a castle which braves the storms of Dunnet bay, and guards the harbour of the ancient town of Thurso-came the voice which, upwards of fifty years ago, awoke the dormant energies of British agriculture, and, from Caithness to Cornwall, stirred up practical men to new exertions. Improvers are not always duly honoured at home, yet the long and useful life of Sir John Sinclair could scarcely fail to make a lasting and still visible impression upon his native county.

The stranger who lands at Wick is struck by the utter nakedness of the country. He ascends a rising ground, and as far as the sight can reach, not a tree meets his eye. An uneven and undulating plain, with occasional low green hills, and many lochs between them, extends on either hand, till the eye rests on the lofty Sutherland hills, which shut in the view towards the west and south. In the days of Sir John Sinclair, this country was nearly all one rude moor-tenanted by here and there a few crofters or small farmers, settled in their rude cabins by the margin of a lake, or on a more sheltered hill-side, or by the border of some green bottom-on which a few starvling black cattle could pick up a scanty subsistence. Land was of so little. value, that few marches were clearly defined. The boundaries of large properties were for the most part unknown; and miles on miles of common moorland were spread over the country in every direction.

Now, every thing is changed or changing, and the spirit. of improvement is as lively in the remote Caithness as in almost any other part of the Island. The landowners have discovered that their paternal possessions are not necessarily the sterile and worthless inheritances they were previously considered. The drain and the improved plough, and the alternate husbandry, and a better manuring, have made corn wave and clover flourish, and even wheat ripen, where a former generation were satisfied with a worthless pasture. Marches have been settled, or are in course of adjustment-sixty thousand acres of Common, now considered worth quarrelling about, have been divided-the rental of some properties has been increased six or eight times within living memory, while that of the whole county has been doubled since 1815. We last year walked over a farm, a few miles from Wick, which had been held on a long lease, just expired, for L.134, and which has been since let for L.800 a-year! The capabilities of this country are little known at a distance. Fifty bushels of wheat, and fifty-six of oats, with equal returns of bear, and as much as three or four hundred stones of hay, are the occasional returns of a Scottish acre; and we have seen as beautiful crops

of turnips and potatoes in Caithness as in any other county in Scotland.

Cross the Ord of Caithness--descend upon the beautiful village of Helmsdale, and skirt the coast of Sutherland; and if you can shut out the mountain back-ground, you will admire the rich farming, the marks of advancing improvement, the monuments of labour expended in subduing refractory nature, and the rewards of persevering industry and skill, which appear in the rich crops of wheat and turnips that refresh the eye, as you pass the base of the hills at Golspie, and ride over the further twelve miles of coast-line which bring you to the mound of Fyvie.

Of the past improvements in Sutherland every one has heard of the conversion of poorly farmed and widely scattered arable patches, into productive sheep-walks-of the removal of an inland peasantry to a sea-bord life of the dispersion of some of the native population, and the emigration of others;-of these changes most of our readers have heard-some with approbation, others perhaps with doubt and hesitating disapproval. Few men in the low country are qualified thoroughly to understand the reasons assigned for these changes-to estimate the policy of them, or to do justice to the motives of those by whom they were suggested and carried into effect. The clearing system was no doubt the most summary method of effecting an immediate improvement-the simplest and most easy for an agent to carry into execution; but, independent of the question of high justice as it is called-in Ireland—we are rather inclined to doubt whether it was the policy which, in its fullest extent, a far-seeing man would have recommended to the noble and benevolent proprietor. The county has undergone extraordinary improvements in its material appearance and apparent prosperity, under the new system. The roads, the buildings, the sheep stock, the tenantry, are all admirable, and such as a great proprietor may well be proud of; but still we have a doubt whether either the sum of human happiness, or the actual rental of the proprietor, has been increased in an equal degree. A system which should have fostered the native population, and to a certain extent have kept them upon the land-which should by instruction have elevated their intellectual condition, and taught and gently led an after generation of them to forget old habits and prejudices, and themselves to become the improvers of the soil on which their fathers had so long lived ;-such a system-a very difficult one, we grant, with a Highland population, requiring long patience and much kindly forbearance, and involving, in all time to come, greater labour and difficulty in management