into pasture. The extension of tillage, by
diminishing the quantity of wild pasture, diminishes
the quantity of butcher's meat, which
the country naturally produces without labour
or cultivation; and, by increasing the
number of those who have either corn, or,
what comes to the same thing, the price of
corn, to give in exchange for it, increases the
demand. The price of butcher's meat, therefore,
and, consequently, of cattle, must gradually
rise, till it gets so high, that it becomes
as profitable to employ the most fertile
and best cultivated lands in raising food for
them as in raising corn. But it must always
be late in the progress of improvement before
tillage can be so far extended as to raise the
price of cattle to this height; and, till it has
got to this height, if the country is advancing
at all, their price must be continually rising.
There are, perhaps, some parts of Europe in
which the price of cattle has not yet got to
this height. It had not got to this height in
any part of Scotland before the Union. Had
the Scotch cattle been always confined to the
market of Scotland, in a country in which
the quantity of land, which can be applied to
no other purpose but the feeding of cattle, is
so great in proportion to what can be applied
to other purposes, it is scarce possible, perhaps,
that their price could ever have risen so
high as to render it profitable to cultivate
land for the sake of feeding them. In England,
the price of cattle, it has already been
observed, seems, in the neighbourhood of
London, to have got to this height about the
beginning of the last century; but it was
much later, probably, before it got through
the greater part of the remoter counties, in
some of which, perhaps, it may scarce yet
have got to it. Of all the different substances,
however, which compose this second sort of
rude produce, cattle is, perhaps, that of which
the price, in the progress of improvement,
rises first to this height.
Till the price of cattle, indeed, has got to
this height, it seems scarce possible that the
greater part, even of those lands which are
capable of the highest cultivation, can be completely
cultivated. In all farms too distant
from any town to carry manure from it, that
is, in the far greater part of those of every extensive
country, the quantity of well cultivated
land must be in proportion to the quantity
of manure which the farm itself produces;
and this, again, must be in proportion to the
stock of cattle which are maintained upon it.
The land is manured, either by pasturing the
cattle upon it, or by feeding them in the stable,
and from thence carrying out their dung to
it. But unless the price of the cattle be sufficient
to pay both the rent and profit of cultivated
land, the farmer cannot afford to pasture
them upon it; and he can still less afford
to feed them in the stable. It is with the produce
of improved and cultivated land only
that cattle can be fed in the stable; because,
to collect the scanty and scattered produce of
waste and unimproved lands, would require
too much labour, and be too expensive. If
the price of the cattle, therefore, is not sufficient
to pay for the produce of improved and
cultivated land, when they are allowed to pasture
it, that price will be still less sufficient to
pay for that produce, when it must be collected
with a good deal of additional labour,
and brought into the stable to them. In these
circumstances, therefore, no more cattle can
with profit be fed in the stable than what are
necessary for tillage. But these can never afford
manure enough for keeping constantly in
good condition all the lands which they are
capable of cultivating. What they afford, being
insufficient for the whole farm, will naturally
be reserved for the lands to which it can
be most advantageously or conveniently applied;
the most fertile, or those, perhaps, in
the neighbourhood of the farm-yard. These,
therefore, will be kept constantly in good condition,
and fit for tillage. The rest will, the
greater part of them, be allowed to lie waste,
producing scarce any thing but some miserable
pasture, just sufficient to keep alive a
few straggling, half-starved cattle; the farm,
though much overstocked in proportion to
what would be necessary for its complete cultivation,
being very frequently overstocked in
proportion to its actual produce. A portion
of this waste land, however, after having been
pastured in this wretched manner for six or
seven years together, may be ploughed up,
when it will yield, perhaps, a poor crop or
two of bad oats, or of some other coarse grain;
and then, being entirely exhausted, it must be
rested and pastured again as before, and another
portion ploughed up, to be in the same
manner exhausted and rested again in its turn.
Such, accordingly, was the general system of
management all over the low country of Scotland
before the Union. The lands which were
kept constantly well manured and in good condition
seldom exceeded a third or fourth part
of the whole farm, and sometimes did not
amount to a fifth or a sixth part of it. The rest
were never manured, but a certain portion of
them was in its turn, notwithstanding, regularly
cultivated and exhausted. Under this
system of management, it is evident, even that
part of the lands of Scotland which is capable
of good cultivation, could produce but little
in comparison of what it may be capable of
producing. But how disadvantageous soever
this system may appear, yet, before the Union,
the low price of cattle seems to have rendered
it almost unavoidable. If, notwithstanding a
great rise in the price, it still continues to prevail
through a considerable part of the country,
it is owing in many places, no doubt, to
ignorance and attachment to old customs, but,
in most places, to the unavoidable obstructions
which the natural course of things opposes