CHAPTER IX. 



THE STATE PROTECTION OF AGEICULTURE. 



We now come to perhaps the most important question re- 

 garding the English Landed Interest that it has hitherto been 

 our office to discuss ; viz., whether it be the duty of a State to 

 show any special favour to its husbandmen. The first half of 

 the eighteenth century terminates the struggle between the 

 flockmaster and the agriculturist. The contest of wool versus 

 wheat had been raging for centuries. Hitherto Englishmen 

 had either turned the whole of their holdings into pasturage, 

 or kept them as much as possible under the plough. The 

 introduction of winter provender was soon to allow them to 

 strike a happy mean by combining the two processes on one 

 holding. In the times when the fleece was worth two-fifths of 

 the sheep, flocks had been kept for their wool; and when 

 cattle were beasts of burden, herds had been kept as much for 

 their muscular as for their milking capabilities. It was now 

 discovered that mutton and beef were important adjuncts to 

 the farmer's income. To put the case in the forcible, if some- 

 what coarse, language of Burke : " The only question respect- 

 ing the excellence of a sheep became how he cuts up, how he 

 tallows in the caul or in the kidneys." ^ 



Strange to say, this alteration in the economy of sheep- 

 farming indirectly brought about a change in the State policy 

 regarding agriculture. For when wool was the principal pro- 

 duct of the English soil, and its manufacture the principal 

 industry of the English commercial classes, there was a certain 

 amount of difficulty in drawing a distinction between the 

 agricultural and commercial interests of this country ; but 



' Quoted by Eden in chap. i. of his State of the Poor. 



188 



