It may, however, be pretended that so unsatisfactory a result is to be accounted for by the unintelligent method in which this redundancy of labour has been applied to the soil. But in the Lothians of Scotland, and in certain parts of England, the art of agriculture is neither unintelligently nor unsuccessfully practised, and probably a given space is there made to produce as remunerative a crop as the united efforts of man and nature are destined to accomplish;[1] yet in those
- ↑ Probably the gross produce per acre obtained by spade cultivation in parts of Flanders is greater—though not very much greater than what is raised from a corresponding area in well cultivated districts in England and Scotland, but the amount of profit enjoyed by the British agriculturist on the transaction is much higher than that obtained by the Belgian cultivator. In comparing Belgium with England, however, it must always be remembered that a great part of Belgium was originally a sand-bank, and that even if the acreable amount of produce in the two countries were the same, Belgian agriculture would have evinced a greater "energy of production." The comparative yield per acre of England, Belgium, and Lombardy, is thus given by M. de Laveleye.
"Sous le rapport du produit brut, la Belgique se trouverait ainsi en premiere ligne parmi les Etats européens et les chiffres de la statistique viendraient confirmer ce que nous avait fait entrevoir l'observation directe. Elle ne le céderait qu'à l'Angleterre proprement dite, prise indépendamment de l'Êcosse et de l'Irlande, et a la Lombardie; car la premiere produit, d'après M. de Lavergne, 200 francs par hectare, et la seconde, d'apès M. Jaciui, 400 millions sur uu peu plus de 2 millions d'hectare, c'est à dire autant que l'Angleterre."
Eco. Rurale, p. 229It is all a question of working at high or low pressure. By putting on more steam, I can add almost indefinitely to the
