SCIENCE WITH PRACTICE, 1845 TO 1873 107 



liamentary Committee on Agricultural Customs, supply 

 abundant materials for estimating the progress of English 

 farming since the Commissioners of the Board of Agricul- 

 ture published their Reports from 1800 to 1812. The 

 general impression made by the comparison is that farmers, 

 speaking generally, had made but little use of the new 

 materials of agricultural wealth which science had placed 

 at their command. In each county high farming was 

 rather the exception than the rule ; at least one-half of 

 the occupiers of land had made little advance upon the 

 open-field farms of the eighteenth century. The character- 

 istic of the period 1845-73 is not the invention of novel- 

 ties, but the wider diffusion of the best practices. 



The repeal of the corn laws acted as a spur to the 

 energies of farmers ; and from 1853 to 1873 they were 

 encouraged by a succession of prosperous seasons, to 

 which the years 1866 and 1867 were the chief exceptions. 

 If harvests were deficient, farmers were consoled by high 

 prices. Wheat during the twenty years succeeding 1848 

 averaged little below the prices of the last twenty years of 

 Protection, and the last six years of the period approached 

 them even more closely.' The Crimean war and the civil 

 war in America stopped supplies from the Baltic and the 

 New World ; the great demand for grain for France raised 

 the markets in 1871 ; the heavy rainfall and deficient 

 harvest of 1872 brought wheat to 57s. per quarter; and 

 thus foreign imports, though relieved in 1869 of the 

 shilling duty, failed to force down the prices of English 

 grain. At the same time the ravages of the cattle plague 

 raised the prices of meat in 1872-3 to a figure which 



' For 20 years preceding 1848 the average price of wheat was 57s. \d. 

 For 20 years succeeding 1848 „ „ „ 525. 2d. 



For five years 1869-70-71-72-73 „ „ „ o6s. bd. 



