FARMING IN OLDEN TIMES. 15 



As enterprise, capital and ability were applied to 

 farming, and as the art and practice of the cultivation 

 of the soil and the management of stock were improved, 

 so agriculture became organised more and more on 

 commercial lines. The stimulus came from without. 

 A hungry people required food, and looked to the land 

 of their own country to supply it. Population, which 

 had increased slowly and irregularly, began to multiply 

 with unprecedented rapidity. Under any circumstances 

 reliance on extraneous supplies was practically impossible, 

 for other countries had little surplus for export except 

 in specially plentiful years, and as supplies came chiefly 

 from Northern and Western Europe a surplus abroad was 

 most likely to coincide with a good harvest at home, and 

 vice versa. During the long warfare with Napoleon the 

 chance of supplies coming from abroad was still further 

 reduced. Notwithstanding the progress of agriculture and 

 the greatly increased productivity of the land, wheat 

 rose to famine prices, the average per quarter during the 

 ten years 1805-14 being 935. 



Under the stimulus of insistent demand landowners 

 and farmers were spurred to expend capital on extending 

 the cultivated area and increasing its productiveness. 

 Much pasture was ploughed up to grow wheat, and land 

 which might never have been brought into cultivation 

 was " forced into productiveness by the sheer weight of 

 the metal that was poured into it." Money made by 

 farming was eagerly invested in the improvement of 

 land. Wastes were brought under cultivation, large 

 areas were cleared of stones to give an arable surface, 

 heaths were cleared, bogs drained, buildings erected, 

 roads constructed. War prices, therefore, did more 

 than enrich the agriculturist ; they led to much permanent 

 improvement of the land. When the crash came, as it 

 did with startling suddenness in 1814-16, widespread 

 ruin overtook the agriculturists, but their work to a 

 large degree remained, though much of the land which 



