gain, is very doubtful; but there can be no doubt whatever that each of the Preston operatives might, by the exercise of ordinary self-denial, lay by weekly in a savings-bank four times the estimated amount of the profit he would derive from being admitted as an actual partner in his master's business. Many of the householders engaged in the strike of 1853 had long been in the receipt, from the labour of themselves and their families, of not less than from 150l. to 2007. a year. Let it not be said, therefore, that the working people cannot save money, and become capitalists if they will. Have we not the fact that the operatives of Blackburn alone sent not less than 30,000l. out of their earnings to maintain the Preston operatives during their fruitless strike? And why should they not in ordinary times in vest these surplus funds in savings-banks, or in co-operative associations, instead of spending it in public houses?

The labouring classes do not yet know the money-power which they possess. The annual wages of the working people of the country is estimated, on good authority, to amount to not less than one hundred and seventy millions sterling. But, notwithstanding the increased remuneration paid for labour during recent years, and the generally reduced cost of living, the savings of the working classes invested in savings-banks have remained almost stationary, and are under eight millions. Will it be believed that the annual earnings of many families engaged in the cotton manufacture amount to more than the average incomes of the clergy of England? and that there are few skilled operatives whose individual earnings do not exceed those of the great body of clerks and shopmen? When the builders lately struck they were earning 5s. 6d. a-day, which is equal to the pay of the

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ensigns and lieutenants of our infantry regiments, without the cost of mess or uniform. Erectors and fitters in the shops of London engineers receive from 358. to 378. a-week, or perhaps a higher average rate of remuneration than is paid to the whole body of dissenting ministers. The operatives employed as iron-rollers earn in ordinary times from 128. to 158. a-day, or equal to the pay of captains and army surgeons after ten years' service. When trade is brisk, the ball-furnace men of Staffordshire, with their families, earn from 300l. to 400l. a-year, which is a larger income than falls to the lot of most professional men, and yet the houses of these favoured labourers are scenes of disgusting untidiness and squalor. If working people are powerless, it is too often because they are thoughtless and improvident. If they are driven into bad bargains with their masters, it is mainly because they have not taken care to provide a defence against destitution in their day of need, by a store of frugal savings in prosperous times. Those who spend their money as they earn it will always be at the mercy of others; and it is melancholy to reflect that when a time of adversity comes they are scarcely a week ahead of actual want.

If the labouring classes would gain a firmer footing in the world, they must exercise economy, self-denial, and forethought, the basis of all manly and truly independent character. What William Felkin, late mayor of Nottingham, himself originally a factory operative, stated before the British Association, at Liverpool, in 1837, cannot be too deeply imprinted on every working man's mind: Inasmuch as I know what it is to labour with the hands long hours, and for small wages, as well as any workman to whom I address myself, and to practise self-denial withal, I am emboldened to declare from experi

It

This increase in wages has taken place without strikes, and is attributable simply to the increased demand for labour, arising from various causes. is, however, worthy of remark, that the increase in the money rate of wages does not represent the actual increase, which can only be duly estimated by taking into consideration the quantity of necessaries which the money earned will purchase. During the period referred to, the average price of Bread has been reduced from 9d. to 6d the 4 lb. loaf; Sugar from 74d. to 44d. per lb; Tea from 68. to 38. 6d; Soap from 7d. to 4d.; and Coals from about 3. to 11. 58. the ton. If, therefore, the increase in money wages, together with the reduction in the price of necessaries, be taken into account, it will be found that the men employed in the building trades of the metropolis have, within the last thirty years, secured an increased remuneration for their labour equivalent to from 30 to 40 per cent.

ence, that the gain of independence, or rather self-dependence, for which I plead, is worth infinitely more than the cost of its attainment; and, moreover, that to attain it is within the power of far the greater number of skilled workmen engaged in our manufactures. A provident and skilful workman is the last to be discharged in bad times, and the first to regain employment. Masters do not fail to recognise their own interests in consulting the interests and feelings of such workmen. Steady employment is itself a firstrate advantage to the prudent and clever mechanic; and were strikes for wages mainly dependent on the wishes of such, they would rarely or never happen. If the workpeople were generally and permanently thrifty, they would seldom have to submit to reduced wages, and never would turn out of work. Their capital in labour and skill would receive the aid of their capital in money, and be a fair counterbalance to their employers in money, skill, and management. The richest, most powerful, and most natural fund on which the working man can rely, is that which he creates himself by his own savings. It enables him to command the price of his labour, not controlled by his necessities, but influenced by a prudent regard for his own welfare and that of his family. He who practises economy and foresight will ordinarily obtain for himself what neither Acts of Parliament nor any foreign aids can securea healthy body, an independent mind, do. mestic happiness, and general esteem. He will be an ornament to the class to which he belongs, and be serviceable in no small degree to the community at large.'

At the same time, employers ought not to stand too strongly upon their rights, nor entrench themselves too exclusively within the circle of their own order. Frankness and cordiality will win working men's hearts, and a ready explanation will often remove misgivings and dissatisfaction. Were there more trust and greater sympathy between classes, there would be less disposition to turn out on the part of men and a more accommodating spirit on the part of masters. An incident which occurred during the strikes of 1842 shows how confidence on one side will beget confidence on the other. When the operatives throughout Yorkshire and Lancashire were endeavouring to induce the workmen in the other mines and factories of the district to rebel, they appealed to the Worsley Colliers, who promptly resisted the combination. In an

address which they forwarded to their employer, the late Lord Ellesmere, they strongly expressed their attachment to him, and concluded in these words: 'With the voice of one man, we declare our design to defend your honour and all in connection with you.' Lord Ellesmere had simply been a good master, and had exerted himself to improve the moral and physical condition of those whom Providence had placed under his charge. The address of his workpeople was but the natural response of human hearts touched by kindness and gentleness. So it was understood by Lord Ellesmere himself, who said in his reply,-'It cannot be too widely known how liberally the working classes of this country are disposed to reward with their goodwill and affection those to whom, rightly or wrongly, they attribute similar feelings towards themselves.'

ART. VII.-The Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, No. XXXVI., Art. 19, Prize Essay on Agricultural Weeds. By Professor Buckman, of the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester. London, 1856.

COBBETT says that 'Ants are a very pretty subject for poets, but a dismal subject for gardeners.' Weeds are a still more dismal subject for farmers. Man has had to do battle with these competitors for the possession of the soil ever since the original sentence went forth to Adam:—

Cursed is the ground for thy sake; thou in

sorrow

In the preparation of the land for every crop weeding is an essential operation; and when the seed is committed to the ground its first germinal life is sadly interfered with by its unbid' rivals, whose greater vigour has caused it to be held as a proverb that Ill weeds grow apace.' As the crop ripens, so do the weeds. Their seeds have to be separated from our grain, or go with it to the grinding, when they manage to escape, and again become a nuisance. Others of the weed tribe have creeping underground stems, like couch and some thistles. Others spread along the surface, and establish a scion,

like the buttercup. As they are all endowed with wonderful powers of vitality, farmers quietly view them as a necessity, and are content to palliate an evil they cannot prevent. Nay, Sir John Sinclair considers this never-ending, still-beginning conflict with the wild produce of the soil a positive advantage, and believes that land would go out of cultivation except for the perennial crops of weeds :

What,' he says, 'is the inference from the fact that couch-grass and thistles can by no means be extirpated? Is it not perpetual exertions, fallowing and agricultural labour? Some may be inclined to say, "A melancholy reflection!" But I say, No, not at all. Providence could not have better contrived than that exertions should be perpetual, and that success should be in proportion. There is not a weed that we ought to wish out of our fields unless we remove and destroy it; because, if there were none, or very few, all fields would be clean, and no praise could light on superior modes of tillage. Some may say again, "So much the better!" But I say, No. Does any man think that our various soils would have been sufficiently pulverized and worked, had there been no enemies of this sort to challenge forth our labours? Sterility would have seized upon our turnip lands, which are only continued in a state to bear their rotations of crops by the necessary periodical renewals of their fertility. So might all our clays have gone to perpetual grass, for neglect of proper tillage would have rendered them unprofitable. The necessity of subsistence produces industrious hands for every depart inent of labour, but the sluggish nature of man requires every stimulus to exertion. The weeds of the fields excite emulation among farmers, and foul fields are always a reproach to the occupier. Thus we are compelled by an unseen hand to better habits and more active industry.' -Sinclair on Grasses, pp. 324-5.

Yet we have seen weedless flower-gardens where the soil nevertheless was kept carefully pulverized, and kitchen-gardens so destitute of interlopers to interfere with the vegetables, that it was necessary to cultivate groundsel for the purpose of feeding a pet bullfinch. If, as Sir John Sinclair says, 'neglect of proper tillage would have rendered clays unprofitable,' what need is there of weeds as an incentive to exertion? The stimulus to toil and till exists independently of them, and by his own argument they are in this respect a superfluity. That, like everything else in creation, they answer many wise and necessary ends, no believer in Providence and no observer of nature can for an instant doubt. But man would plough, and sow, and reap, even though he could succeed in relieving his land of these robbers of the soil, and the illogical moralis

ings of Sir John Sinclair need not deter the most zealous improver from acting upon the maxim that prevention is better than cure.'

What is a weed? Everybody in England would pronounce the dandelion, commonly called dandy lion, an unmitigated pest. Yet we recollect reading in some Australian newspaper that a plant of it in full bloom attracted crowds of pleased spectators at a flower-show. How we should smile here at a dandelion in a pot, or at the publication by an eminent gardener of a treatise on its cultivation! The

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lexicographers have not been very successful in their definitions of a weed. Johnson calls it 'A herb noxious or useless.' The agriculturists in their definitions look only to practical results, and confound things which, both in popular and scientific language, are distinct. When,' says Stephens, in his Book of the Farm,' should not be, it is a weed. For examany plant is found growing where it ple, a stalk of wheat in a bed of tulips in a garden is a weed, and would be removed; and, in like manner, a tulip in a wheat-field is a weed, and should be eradicated.' To the same purpose speaks the author of the article Weeds,' in Morton's Cyclopædia of Agriculture:- Every plant different from the crop, and growing with the crop to its hinderance, is a weed. Regarded in this light, most of our wild, and even cultivated, plants may take the place of weeds; thus potatoes left in the soil may completely smother a succeeding crop, or the shed seeds of a former crop may germinate amid a new one, and, in both cases, their removal by weeding will be necessary to success.' This will serve for the farmer's view of the subject. These extraneous plants, which mingle with his crops, cost him large sums of money to keep them in check, and often through ignorance of their peculiarities he employs fancied methods of extirpation which are in truth rather modes of propagation.

Everybody is acquainted with the coltsfoot, the Tussilago farfara of the botanists, which the farmer considers the 'nastiest weed' he has to deal with. Who has not observed its golden stars as they dot the marly banks in the sunny days of March, each resting on a single stem and springing directly from the ground without a leaf to nestle in? Even while these stars are fully out, a closer look will show us some of the tribe in their infantile state, when they droop downwards so that the green flower-cup may act as a roof to

Here, then, we see that the crow garlic, if allowed to seed, has a prodigious method of increase, and we must recollect that its increase is not, like the majority of weed-plants, by seeds which are agreeable to birds and insects, by which means many much more productive plants are kept in check, but on the contrary, it would appear to be avoided by all classes of these creatures, whilst the bulbels themselves, which are seldom abortive, possess such wonderful powers of vitality that they may be kept, like onions or the ordinary flowering bulbs, for months, and perhaps even years, and still maintain their germinating power.'

The farmer, who is not aware of the essential circumstance that the principal multiplication of the crow-garlic is through the bulbs, often, in his ignorance, allows a whole of this pest to be matured. progeny An acquaintance with botany in its application to weeding can be no unimportant acquisition when the cost of the operation upon arable land varies from 58. to 208. for each acre every year: a sum which almost amounts to a second rent, and which is probably heavier for low-rented lands than for those of higher value. When a farm gets out of order, weeds are not only an increased charge for years, but they sometimes take such strong hold that the culti

vator is obliged to defer many of his operations both in time of working and cropping, and the ground can hardly be said to be his own until he is enabled to get rid of the intruders which deprive him of the beneficial possession of the soil.

The examples we have adduced point to a conclusion which is seldom sufficiently heeded in practice-the importance of extirpating weeds in their infancy, not only to prevent the existing growth from drawing the nutriment from the earth, but also to hinder the rapid and often unsuspected multiplication from the parent plant. The old rural rhyme says that

'One year's seeding

Is seven years' weeding.'

The truth of this maxim will be rendered more apparent by the following table, which gives the number of seeds produced in some of the commonest weeds which are met with in the fields or by the wayside. The catalogue is drawn up from several hundred observations made during the last five years over different parts of England, under the most varied conditions of geological formation and methods of farming.