THE TENANT-FARMER, 1583-1702. 819 



a system it was impossible that agriculture should progress, 

 and during the seventeenth century, only local improvements 

 were made, which the ordinary farmer could not or dared not 

 adopt. The change was to come from the singular out- 

 burst of agricultural activity and energy among the propertied 

 classes in the eighteenth century, the Cokes, the Townshends, 

 and a thousand others, who vied with each other, as Arthur 

 Young says, from a duke to an apprentice, in making British 

 agriculture perfect. They made the British farmer the best 

 agriculturist in the world, and their worthless descendants 

 have beggared him. 





