to the immediate or speedy establishment
of a better system: first, to the poverty of the
tenants, to their not having yet had time to
acquire a stock of cattle sufficient to cultivate
their lands more completely, the same rise of
price, which would render it advantageous for
them to maintain a greater stock, rendering it
more difficult for them to acquire it; and,
secondly, to their not having yet had time to
put their lands in condition to maintain this
greater stock properly, supposing they were
capable of acquiring it. The increase of stock
and the improvement of land are two events
which must go hand in hand, and of which
the one can nowhere much outrun the other.
Without some increase of stock, there can be
scarce any improvement of land, but there
can be no considerable increase of stock, but
in consequence of a considerable improvement
of land; because otherwise the land could not
maintain it. These natural obstructions to
the establishment of a better system, cannot
be removed but by a long course of frugality
and industry; and half a century or a century
more, perhaps, must pass away before the old
system, which is wearing out gradually, can
be completely abolished through all the different
parts of the country. Of all the commercial
advantages, however, which Scotland
has derived from the Union with England, this
rise in the price of cattle is, perhaps, the
greatest. It has not only raised the value of
all highland estates, but it has, perhaps, been
the principal cause of the improvement of the
low country.
In all new colonies, the great quantity of
waste land, which can for many years be applied
to no other purpose but the feeding of
cattle, soon renders them extremely abundant;
and in every thing great cheapness is the
necessary consequence of great abundance.
Though all the cattle of the European colonies
in America were originally carried from
Europe, they soon multiplied so much there,
and became of so little value, that even horses
were allowed to run wild in the woods, without
any owner thinking it worth while to
claim them. It must be a long time after the
first establishment of such colonies, before it
can become profitable to feed cattle upon the
produce of cultivated land. The same causes,
therefore, the want of manure, and the disproportion
between the stock employed in cultivation
and the land which it is destined to
cultivate, are likely to introduce there a system
of husbandry, not unlike that which still
continues to take place in so many parts of
Scotland. Mr Kalm, the Swedish traveller,
when he gives an account of the husbandry of
some of the English colonies in North America,
as he found it in 1749, observes, accordingly,
that he can with difficulty discover there
the character of the English nation, so well
skilled in all the different branches of agriculture.
They make scarce any manure for
their corn fields, he says; but when one piece
of ground has been exhausted by continual
cropping, they clear and cultivate another
piece of fresh land; and when that is exhausted,
proceed to a third. Their cattle are
allowed to wander through the woods and
other uncultivated grounds, where they are
half-starved; having long ago extirpated almost
all the annual grasses, by cropping them
too early in the spring, before they had time
to form their flowers, or to shed their seeds.[24]
The annual grasses were, it seems, the best
natural grasses in that part of North America;
and when the Europeans first settled
there, they used to grow very thick, and to
rise three or four feet high. A piece of ground
which, when he wrote, could not maintain one
cow, would in former times, he was assured,
have maintained four, each of which would
have given four times the quantity of milk
which that one was capable of giving. The
poorness of the pasture had, in his opinion,
occasioned the degradation of their cattle,
which degenerated sensibly from one generation
to another. They were probably not unlike
that stunted breed which was common all
over Scotland thirty or forty years ago, and
which is now so much mended through the
greater part of the low country, not so much
by a change of the breed, though that expedient
has been employed in some places, as
by a more plentiful method of feeding them.
Though it is late, therefore, in the progress
of improvement, before cattle can bring such
a price as to render it profitable to cultivate
land for the sake of feeding them; yet of all
the different parts which compose this second
sort of rude produce, they are perhaps the first
which bring this price; because, till they bring
it, it seems impossible that improvement can
be brought near even to that degree of perfection
to which it has arrived in many parts of
Europe.
As cattle are among the first, so perhaps venison
is among the last parts of this sort of
rude produce which bring this price. The
price of venison in Great Britain, how extravagant
soever it may appear, is not near sufficient
to compensate the expense of a deer
park, as is well known to all those who have
had any experience in the feeding of deer. If
it was otherwise, the feeding of deer would
soon become an article of common farming, in
the same manner as the feeding of those small
birds, called turdi, was among the ancient
Romans. Varro and Columella assure us,
that it was a most profitable article. The fattening
of ortolans, birds of passage which arrive
lean in the country, is said to be so in
some parts of France. If venison continues
in fashion, and the wealth and luxury of