Agricultural Revolution 15 



a short time 1 . The transformation of the grass-land was often carried 

 out in the roughest way*, in spite of the admirable instructions which 

 were constantly being published both by the Board of Agriculture* 

 and by private authorities*. The profits to be made out of the sudden 

 boom in wheat prevented farmers from thinking of improving their 

 land with a view to its future fertility*. The bad harvests, aided by 

 the limitation of imports due to the war, ensured them enormous net 

 profits. For Gregory King's law, that bad harvests raise prices to 

 a greater extent than is accounted for by the actual shortage, was 

 clearly justified at this time. Even the landed interest admitted that 

 it was in the years of bad harvest that they made most money out of 

 their corn 8 . 



The one-sided extension of arable at the expense of all other 

 branches of farming in the period from 1760 to 1813 is evident from 

 the writings of the chief contemporary agricultural authors. Their 

 own ideal was a combination of arable and pasture-farming, an 

 improved three-field system, with a more intensive rotation of crops, 

 and above all a great increase in the cultivation of turnips for 

 feeding purposes. But all these improvements presupposed that 

 agriculturists would find it profitable to increase their live-stock, as in 

 fact later on feeding-crops were increased when pasture-farming began 

 to flourish. At this period the case was otherwise. 



The growing profits obtainable from corn, and the worsening of 

 the market for animal produce, led to deterioration rather than 

 progress in pasture-farming. This is a constant complaint with 

 writers on agriculture 7 . But the neglect of this branch of farming 



1 St John Priest, A General View of the Agriculture of Buckinghamshire, 1813, p. 249. 



5 Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society, Vol. IX (1849), p. 96. 



s Cp. Vol. ill of the Communications to the Board of Agriculture, 180*, passim. 

 * E.g. N. Hartley, Some Cursory Observations on the Conversion of Pasture into Tillage, 

 Bath, 1802. 



6 T. Davis, A General View of the Agriculture of Wiltshire, 1813, p. 156: "The tempta- 

 tion of immediate profit is frequently too strong to allow them to look forward to future 

 consequences, and more particularly those who know that they shall soon quit their farms." 



6 W. Pitt, A General View of the Agriculture of Leicestershire, 1809, p. 53 : " In twenty- 

 four years' experience, upon a considerable scale, I always made the most money in difficult 

 seasons." 



7 R. Brown, Treatise on Rural Affairs, Edinburgh, 1811, Vol. II, p. 202: "Though 

 horses, neat cattle, sheep, and swine, are of equal importance to the British Farmer with 

 corn crops, yet we have few treatises concerning these animals, compared with the immense 

 number that have been written on the management of arable land or the crops produced 

 upon it. Whether this difference of attention proceeds from an erroneous preference for the 

 plough. ..we shall not stop to determine." Cp. also A. Thaer, Der praktische Ac ktrbau ivn 

 R. W. Dickson, Berlin, 1807, pp. xxi f. 



