The Revolution in Agriculture 69 



average price of a quarter of wheat was 8oj. ; during the twenty- 

 three years before its outbreak the average price was 46^. The 

 first Board of Agriculture was established in 1793 with Sir John 

 Sinclair as President and Arthur Young as Secretary. The 

 enthusiasm which they and others had shown for agricultural 

 education got fuller scope. Young worked with great energy, 

 travelling through the country. He described good and bad 

 methods of agriculture wherever he found them, holding up the 

 first for imitation and the second for a warning. His activity 

 was like that of a bee which passes from flower to flower and 

 spreads fertility. The Board of Agriculture sent other men 

 through most of the counties in Great Britain to make surveys 

 similar to those made by Young. It employed Sir Humphry 

 Davy to lecture on agricultural chemistry in 1803 and following 

 years, and thus took the first step towards giving farmers a 

 scientific education in a systematic form. 



These things make it clear that the Government, landlords, 

 and farmers set about the improvement of agriculture with zeal 

 and efficiency in several directions. In handling soils, crops, and 

 live stock they made great progress, but they failed seriously in 

 handling each other, and still more in handling their labourers 

 and customers. They were better as chemists and botanists than 

 as economists. Agriculture had been prosperous before the war : 

 it became much more prosperous during its course. The payment 

 of the labourers was an important matter, and we might expect 

 that it would have been dealt with in the progressive and enter- 

 prising spirit which was active in other ways. This did not 

 happen. Landlords had the chief influence in Parliament and 

 in the local administration of justice. Wages had been fixed by 

 Act of Parliament as early as 1349, and since 1563 by the Justices 

 in the different counties. Instead of sharing the great prosperity 

 in agriculture with the labourers they squeezed them down to 

 the meanest limit of subsistence. An Act of Parliament in 1782 



