106 SCIENCE WITH PRACTICE, 1845 TO 1873 



policy only began to be felt in 1873. From 1846 to 1877 

 no proposition to inquire into the state of agriculture was 

 laid before Parliament, if we except the inquiry into tenant 

 right of 1848, and into land improvements in 1873. 

 After the Crimean war the rentals of land rapidly and 

 steadily increased ; between 1857 and 1878 they rose not 

 less than 20 per cent. ; and the capitalised value of the 

 increase was calculated at upwards of 260 millions. 



This prosperity was claimed by the Manchester school 

 as their achievement. Apart from the impulse of despair 

 which it gave to farmers, there can be no doubt that free 

 trade encouraged the best form of high farming. Corn 

 fetched so low a price that, regarded as a separate depart- 

 ment, corn-growing ceased to pay. But the rise in the 

 price of meat enabled farmers to grow corn at a profit in 

 conjunction with stock-feeding. Free trade forced them 

 to adopt a mixed husbandry of corn and cattle, and made 

 corn pay through the intervention of green crops and live 

 stock. Here, again, the question now to be considered is 

 whether these favourable conditions still exist. There can, 

 it is feared, be but one answer. ' Down corn, up horn,' was 

 the principle on which farming profits depended. Now 

 both are down together. After the adoption of free trade 

 the farmer's chief resource was to sell corn in the shape of 

 meat ; but the recent fall in the prices of stock has check- 

 mated his industry. 



The period from 1812 to 1845 had witnessed the pre- 

 paration for, rather than the adoption of, high farming. 

 The reports made to the Royal Agricultural Society in 

 the early years of its existence, the letters of Sir James 

 Caird as 'Times' Commissioner in 1850, the letters of 

 the Commissioner of the ' Morning Chronicle ' in the 

 same year, the evidence given before Mr. Pusey's Par- 



