be read in Mr. Mansfield's volume, pp. 458-463; and the new policy of the republic, which admitted strangers, whom Francia had so jealously excluded, was practically inaugurated in 1853, by the opening of the river Paraguay (which the jealousy of Rosas had long kept closed) to British ships as far as Asuncion. A treaty between Brazil and Paraguay has just made Asuncion the thoroughfare for the enormous mineral wealth of the western Brazil; but nothing, it seems, can permanently protect Paraguay from those miseries which have desolated every State of South America for the last forty years, save the introduction of a sturdy race of European and American colonists, protected, by the strong arms of their civilized mother-countries, from the intrigue, caprice, ignorance, and brutality of the surrounding military despots for the time being. Let us trust that the alliance formed between Paraguay and England, France, the United States, and Sardinia, will not remain waste paper; but that if "intervention" be needed, intervention will be boldly employed, to protect both the Paraguayans and the new colonists against the machinations of those surrounding States, whose political career has been marked by nothing but blood, as the many have been butchered periodically for the sake of the ambition and cupidity of the few, and their hired myrmidons. Let the European nations, or the United States, once become fully alive to the enormous capabilities of Paraguay, and self-interest will make them interfere with a strong hand to put down that suicidal anarchy, which they now only regard with contempt; but which they will then begin to fear and hate, as a curse and a hindrance to the prog ress of the human commonweal. And, meanwhile, may the kindly Paraguayans enjoy themselves, as best they can, in their simple, picturesque way, till the fast-approaching day shall come, when play shall be at an end, and work begin.

THE AGRICULTURAL CRISIS.

[The North British Review, No. XXVII.]

"THERE is a certain immorality," said Mr. Carlyle of the Corn-Laws seven years ago, “a certain immorality, where there is not a necessity, in speaking about things finished; in chopping into small pieces the already slashed and slain. When the brains are out, why does not a solecism die?" But, alas! the Corn-Law solecism does not die. Even though buried, and got safely out of sight, as we hope, forever, it still keeps muttering out of its grave, in querulous confused ejaculations, Cassandra-prophecies of vengeance and ruin, and entreaties to be allowed to rise again, if but for a few weeks, to set forth certain important arguments which it unfortunately forgot to urge during its lifetime. The press teems still with Protectionist pamphlets, demonstrations that Mr. Caird is mad, Mr. Huxtable is mad, Liebig is mad, political economists are mad, all England mad; exhortations to idleness and despair, sermons on the patriotic duty of proving that free-trade cannot work, by refusing to work it, and doing nothing out of a

Ed

1. The Present Prices. By the Rev. A. HUXTABLE. London, 1849. 2. Mr. Huxtable and his Pigs. By PORCIUS. Edinburgh, 1850 3. High Farming the best Substitute for Protection. By J. CAIRD, of Baldoon. inburgh, 1849. 4. Caird's High Farming Harrowed. Edinburgh, 1850. 5. An Appeal to the Common Sense of the Country. By Professor Low. Edinburgh, 1850. 6. Analysis of Evidence before Health of Towns' Commission. London, 1847. 7. Flax versus Cotton. No. I. By Mr. WARNES, of Trimmingham. London, 1849. 8. Silk Culture. By Mrs. WHITBY, of Lymington. London, 1849. 9. A Word to Farmers on Maize, &c. By J. KEENE. London, 1849.

conscientious spite. To the majority of these productions, Mr. Carlyle's rule will well apply. It would be foreign to the purpose, and indeed to the dignity of this Review, to meddle with them. But when a man like Professor Low of Edinburgh, of known intellect, learning, and character, as well as high official station, comes forward as the champion of this gospel of agricultural despair, and in a pamphlet of more than a hundred closely printed pages, propounds at length a proof of the insanity of three fourths of her Majesty's subjects, he requires a patient and respectful hearing, and, if pos sible, a careful and earnest refutation. His pamphlet, going forth with professorial authority from Edinburgh, the capital city of that part of Great Britain which has been always foremost in agriculture, will be taken by hundreds of farmers and land-owners as a scientific justification of their own terror, wilful laziness, and idle threats (for the thing has reached that pass) of rebellion. In short, it is calculated to do infinite harm, whereof if we can counteract a part, we shall consider this Journal of as not having existed in vain for the cause justice and civilization.

But we do not wish merely to answer Professor Low's negative by a counter negative, merely to reaffirm that free-trade is not wrong, in answer to his assertion that it is not right. There is distress among the farmers; there is a perplexity as to the future methods of British farming; and we are bound, if we take upon ourselves to reform those who wish to write "impossible" on all future agriculture, to show the grounds of our hope, and some, at least, of the methods in which that hope may be realized.

Most of the pamphlets on both sides of this controversy are, as we have before said, of a kind with which neither this Review, nor its readers,

nor free-trade, have much to do, being merely special pleadings pro and con, with this advantage on the side of the free-trade pamphlets, that they aim at a positive, their opponents at a merely negative result. It is something to prove that pigs can be fatted, or corn grown, under Free-trade, though only in one particular case, as Mr. Huxtable and Mr. Caird profess to do; while it is nothing to refute their particular assertions, or to prove that in any one individual case despair and impotence are the only outlook. You may prove a law by proving one example; you cannot disprove it by disproving one. Mr. Caird of Baldoon may have (in our opinion he has) quoted an exceptional case; every farm has not, like the one he instances, an unlimited command of sea-weed; potato culture on a large scale is not a desirable thing, even if the potatoes are sound (which indeed they pertinaciously refuse to be). Mr. Caird's statistics may be, as his opponents say, utterly ideal, and their own also; but what of that? Ginger shall be hot in the mouth still. There are other hopeful farmers besides Mr. Caird, other crops besides potatoes, other manures besides sea-weed. Or "thinkest thou" that because Mr. Huxtable's pig-bill shows a deficit, "there shall be no more cakes and ale?" Britain is not come to that pass, surely, that her only salvation is to be fat bacon, much less her destruction the want thereof, or rather not want thereof, pigs being as greedy and fatable under Free-trade, strange to say, as they were under Protection, but want of "Farmers' profits" thereon.

"But the facts,-the facts!"" cry the Protectionists; "look at our ledgers, our statistical proofs of loss and ruin." Well, one man's figures are as good as another's, or indeed better, in this case; seeing that from certain causes which will be hereafter noticed, farmers have been in the perennial

habit of parading their losses rather than their gains. But really, without undervaluing statistics, we care very little for these half-page-of-figure arguments. "There is no romance, " it has been

well said, "like the romance of statistics,' the art of "combler les numéros," of "cooking returns," by which the most utterly contradictory propositions can be proved with equal certainty, and Bianchi and Neri can go on refuting each other unrefuted to all eternity, by a simple process, namely, that the Bianchi shall use all the facts which look white, and the Neri all those which look black. The truth is, in statistics, as in every other physical science, a little learning is a dangerous thing. An enormous number of facts must be collated before anything like a safe general law can be deduced from them. The man of genius may, indeed, hit off instinctively a world-wide law from a single phenomenon; but he will keep it to himself for years, rack and torture it by every possible mode of verification, before he gives it to the world. With quacks and sciolists, who, from half a dozen phenomena jump at a conclusion, or rather tack on to them the conclusion which they had already determined to find, — with them theories are as plentiful as blackberries, and each man's small ledger of facts proves all he wanted to prove, at least. In proportion to a man's real inductive genius, whether in chemistry, anatomy, or any other inductive science, will be his cautious and reverent abstinence from hasty generalization; and statistics, the science of deducing social and commercial laws from numerical returns, is as deep and broad a science as any other, requiring, like them, continual self-distrust, continual watchfulness lest effects be attributed to wrong causes, continual suspicion of unperceived influences at work; the energies of a whole mind, and the labor of a whole life. Some such