CHAPTER XIX. 



THE PROGRESS OF SCIENTIFIC AGRICULTURE. 



The first fifty years of tMs present century were destined to 

 prove of what grit tlie British farmer is composed. Amidst 

 the ruinous fall in prices on the restoration of peace ; the up- 

 setting of the basis on which all agricultural contracts were 

 founded by means of Peel's Currency Bill of 1819 ; the de- 

 struction of farming stock by rustic imitators of the Luddites 

 in 1830-1 ; the terrible visitations of disease on both animal 

 and vegetable life during the last twenty years of this period ; 

 and last, but not least, the expected destruction of profitable 

 wheat cultivation by the repeal of the Corn Laws, the husband- 

 man refused to be deterred in his efforts to extract from the 

 earth all that nature had intended her to yield. Vast wastes 

 continued to be enclosed, landlords' and farmers' capital kept 

 on being sunk in the soil, and honours and emoluments of all 

 kinds were held out in order to induce men of science to direct 

 their inventive genius into channels likely to be of benefit to 

 the Landed Interest. 



One feature of the husbandry then practised was the con- 

 version of a large area of pasturage into wheat-producing soil. 

 The increase in population demanded, and the re-enactment of 

 the Corn Laws in 1815 stimulated, this course, while the repeal 

 of these laws in 1848, and consequent admission of foreign 

 grain into the home market, have, during the last fifty years, 

 demonstrated the mischievous extent to which such artificial 

 means had carried it.^ 



At first sight it would appear that the demand of an in- 



' Would that Mr. Gladstone's famous advice to farmers to grow jam 

 had then been forthcoming. 



