OLD ABBEY-LANDS.

359

ment, and the whole lives of two successors may be employed in impoverishing it again without reducing it to the low condition from which it had originally been raised.

We have in England many remarkable instances of this latter fact, which, in the neighbourhood in which they occur, are often considered inexplicable. Near the ruins of old abbeys and monasteries, for example, which have been long demolished, a few fields are often observed which exceed in fertility all the adjoining land, and, though treated no better than the rest, have ever within the memory of man given better crops. Facts of this kind are to be explained by a reference to the customs of the time when the ecclesiastical buildings still flourished. It was the habit of the officials of the church or monastery to collect, as a due, all the manure made by the cattle and sheep of the cottars or tenants who held under it, and to apply it to the home farm, which was cultivated for the immediate use of the church. The holders of land, by way of rent, for every four acres they held, were in some instances bound to plough one acre for the church; and to this, and to the grass land kept in their own hands, the servants of the church applied the manure which they took from the tenantry.* It cannot,

* Illustrations are to be found in the following extracts from the Chronicles of Jocelyn of Brakelond, pp. 29 and 30:

"And it was done accordingly, and confirmed by our charter, that there be given to them another quittance from a certain customary payment, which is called sorpeni,* for four shillings, payable at the same term. The cellarer was also used to receive one penny, by the year, for every cow belonging to the men of the town for their dung, (unless, perchance, they happened to be the cows of the chaplains or the servants at the court lodge ;) and these cows he was used to impound, and occupied himself much in such matters.

"The cellarer was to have the ploughings and the other services-to

*Sorpeni. This word is the same as scharpenny or scharnpenny-that is, dung-penny, from schearn, dung. By this it seems the tenants were bound, as being originally bondmen, to pen up their cattle at night in the pound or yard of their lord, for the benefit of their dung; and if they did not do so, they paid this dung-penny as a compensation.

360

THEIR VERY GRADUAL EXHAUSTION.

I think, be doubted, that the differences still observed in the fertility of lands adjoining the ruins of monastic houses, are in part to be ascribed to the long continuance of a practice by which the natural fertilising substances of a whole neighbourhood were lavished on a comparatively restricted space. That it is very long since this marked distinction was made in favour of the abbey home-farm, is the point I wish to bring out. It shows that land is very grateful, and that when once enriched, either by nature or by the hand of man, it may long resist exhaustion, and maintain a decided superiority over that which adjoins it. But its doing so is no proof that, though later, it will not also be finally exhausted, if submitted to inconsiderate and selfish modes of culture.

The first practical or economical consequence of this exhaustion of the land is, that it gradually ceases to produce a remunerative return of those crops which have been specially cultivated upon, and have been the immediate means of exhausting it. In North America, generally, this crop has been wheat-as this has always been the kind of grain for which the most ready market could be obtained, or which could be most certainly exchanged for the West India produce and the manufactured articles which the settler required. As the exhausting culture

wit, the ploughing of one rood for each acre, without meals, (which custom is still observed,) and was to have the folds where all the men of the town, except the steward, who has his own fold, are bound to put their sheep, (which custom, also, is still observed.)

"Also, the cellarer was used freely to take all the dunghills in every street, before the doors of those who were holding overland; for to them only was it allowable to collect dung, and to keep it. This custom was not enforced in the time of the Abbot Hugh, up to the period when Dennis and Roger of Hingham became cellarers, who, being desirous of reviving the ancient custom, took the cars of the burgesses, laden with dung, and made them unload; but a multitude of the burgesses resisting, and being too strong for them, every one in his own tenement now collects his dung in a heap, and the poor sell theirs when and to whom they choose."

SHIFTING OF THE WHEAT-REGION.

361

proceeded, therefore the quantity of wheat raised beyond the demands of the state or colony-that is, the surplus for exportation-gradually decreased.

I need not enter into details upon this point; the grand consequence is such as I have described, and the general proof of it is, that the wheat-exporting regions of North America have, as I have already stated in my remarks upon western New York, been gradually shifting their locality, and retiring inland and towards the west. The flats of the Lower St Lawrence were the granary of America in the times of French dominion; western New York succeeded these; next came Canada West; and now the chief surplus exists, and the main supplies for the markets of Europe are drawn from the newer regions beyond the lakes. These in their turn, as the first virgin freshness passes away, will cease to be productive of abundant wheat, and eastern America must then look for its supplies of this grain either to a better culture of its own exhausted soil, or to regions still nearer the setting

sun.

This natural consequence of an exhausting system of culture has been aided and hastened by other causes, the study of which is full of interest and instruction. I may advert to one of these.

When a soil becomes unfavourable to the growth of a plant, the plant, if made to grow upon it, comes up weak, and is liable to disease and to the attacks of insects and parasitic plants. Whether as a natural consequence of this kind, arising naturally from the exhaustion of the soil and the weakening of the wheat-plant, or as the effect of some other cause not understood, it is an important fact that the attacks of the wheat-midge have, in Lower Canada, been lending their aid for many years to diminish the wheat-crop in quantity, and to render it less certain. A gradual revolution, therefore, has been taking place, not only in the husbandry, but

362

REMARKABLE CHANGE OF PRODUCE

in the food of the people also, and in the kind as well as quantity of the surplus produce they have been able to bring to market. I know, indeed, of no well-ascertained facts in the agricultural history of any country which are more striking in these respects than those which are presented by a comparison of the quantities—relative and absolute of the different kinds of grain produced in Lower Canada, at successive periods, during the last twenty-five years.

The following table, published by the Canadian Board of Statistics in 1849, exhibits the amount of this produce in bushels in the years 1827, 1831, and 1844, respectively:

and pro

In this table we see that from 1827 to 1831,

bably somewhat later, a similar state of things existed, and that a gradual increase took place in the amount of all the crops raised; a natural consequence of the increasing population, and of the larger breadth of land every year subjected to the plough. The wheat-crop increased by 500,000 bushels, the oat crop by 800,000, and the potato crop by 500,000. In these quantities we see a slight tendency to an increase, in the proportion of oats grown, above that of wheat or potatoes; but in the other crops there is nothing to arrest especial attention.

In 1844, however, a very different state of things presents itself. During the interval of thirteen years (from 1831 to 1844,) the wheat-crop, instead of increasing 2,000,000 bushels, as it ought to have done, had dimi

IN LOWER CANADA.

363

nished from 3,500,000 (its amount in 1831) to less than 1,000,000 bushels. The barley crop, on the other hand, had increased by 800,000 bushels, that of pease by 400,000, of potatoes by 2,500,000, and of oats by the enormous quantity of 4,000,000 bushels.

Whoever is acquainted with the practical operations of husbandry, will be able to conceive how many anxieties and losses, and repeated failures of usual crops, must have beset the unhappy farmer, before his course of cropping could be so changed as almost entirely to substitute oats for wheat in the fields he had set aside for grain. The wheat was clung to by the Canadians with the more pertinacity, because it was the crop which brought in the annual supplies of money and other foreign articles, and because it formed a considerable part of their usual food. The failure of this source of supply brought debts and mortgages, and transference of property; and to it is to be ascribed a considerable proportion of the mortgages which, as I have said, hang round the necks of the rural population, over so much of this part of northeastern America.

In relation to the corn-markets of the world, this change converted Lower Canada, on the whole, from an exporter into an importer of wheat-as it no longer produced enough for its own consumption; and in reference to a large part of its own population, which was unable to buy wheat, turned them from the consumption of this grain to that of potatoes and oats, with a lesser quantity of pease and barley. This was before the failure of the potato crop; and in this state of things, when, by the previous failure of the wheat, the potato had become doubly precious, it will be understood how the potato disease must have produced a more intense amount of suffering among the Lower Canadians. The French population naturally dislike the oat for food, and consume very unsightly and distasteful varieties of soft bread, rather than live upon