110 CAUSES OF THE DECLINE 



v Fortunately for England, the great landowners answere 

 the call and conferred a lasting benefit on the country. 

 From the beginning of the eighteenth century the land- 

 owning gentry and peers devoted themselves to more scien- 

 tific farming. The successful statesman, Walpole, read 

 his letters from his steward before his State letters. The 

 disappointed politician, Townshend, found in the pursuit of 

 agriculture a refuge from ennui. A rector, on being rebuked 

 by his archdeacon for growing turnips in his churchyard, 

 promised that it should be barley next year. ' Bolingbroke 

 caused his house at Dawley to be painted with ricks, spades, 

 and prongs/ says Mr. Prothero, 'and read Swift's letters 

 between two haycocks, with his eyes to heaven, not in admi- 

 ration of the Dean but in fear of rain.' l Before long, 

 Bakewell, of Dishley, 1725-94, Coke, of Holkham, 1776, 

 the Duke of Bedford, and many others, were to make 

 England famous for her scientific methods of cultivation, 

 and for her fine breeds of cattle and of sheep. In short, it 

 became the fashion to be an agriculturist, especially when 

 George III adopted the role of the Farmer King. 



Meanwhile, the industrial revolution of the eighteenth 

 century had commenced. The chief features of this revo- 

 lution may, so far as we are concerned, be briefly summed 

 up. The Scottish union had widened our internal market ; 

 the Treaty of Utrecht had given us final entry into the 

 Mediterranean, and the Seven Years' War left us masters of 

 India, of the greater part of North America, and of most 

 of the West Indian Islands, as well as giving us the com- 

 mand of the sea. Thereby the area of our commerce was 

 vastly extended, and English shipping, encouraged by the 

 Navigation Laws, was ready to carry our goods to these 

 new markets. At once the desire to produce as largelj 



1 Cf. Prothero, p. 78 if. 



