The State Protection of Agriculture. 193 



restrictions and prohibitions had sunk its market price at 

 home below that current in foreign lands. He preferred a 

 Free Trade as setting all manufacturers on a level footing ; 

 but he still more preferred, he said, the policy of reciprocity ; 

 and therefore he maintained that, until such was possible, a 

 proper duty should be placed on the export of wool, in order to 

 benefit our manufacturers, our flock-masters, and our revenues, 

 while at the same time it would put a stop to smuggling.^ 



Young's championship of the flock-masters' interest was not 

 unneeded at a time when the majority of husbandmen were 

 converting the wastes into grain-producing enclosures, though 

 any restriction of this practice was quite the last object he had 

 in view. There are even at the present day in the United 

 Kingdom some fifteen million acres of waste which have been 

 found more remunerative as virgin pasturage than as culti- 

 vated soil. A hundred years ago there was this same quantity 

 in England alone, on the greater portion of which only the 

 flock would flourish. One unfortunate cause which urged 

 farmers to neglect the breeding and improvement of hvestock, 

 and made them look to cultivation and the breaking up of 

 waste lands for their livelihood, was their inability to protect 

 their flocks and herds, by isolation or otherwise, from con- 

 stantly recurring attacks of epizootic disease. For instance, 

 in 1735, and again in 1745, the rot — a not very contagious 

 disorder — raged amongst deer, sheep, lambs, hares, and rabbits, 

 so that the carrion accumulated to such a degree that the fields 

 and highways became tainted and polluted.^ 



By the middle of the century now reached, most agricultur- 

 ists looked upon the prosperity of the flock-master as a thing 

 of the past. As for Young, though, as stated above, he had 

 attempted to promote the welfare of the wool industry, he re- 

 garded the sheep mainly as a means of producing manure for 

 cereals. No more forcible proof of the gradual revolution in 

 English farming, that had been taking place during the one 



' Annals of Agriculture, vol. vi. p. 506. 



^ A Complete System of Experienced Improvements made on Sheep, etc., 

 etc, W. Ellis. A copy of this work was found by John Donaldson in 

 George the Fourth's librarj^ in the British Museum. — Agri. Biog., p. 52. 



II. O 



