PREFACE 



English Farming Past and Present is based on an article which 

 appeared in the Quarterly Review for 1885. The article was 

 subsequently expanded into a book, published in 1888 by Messrs. 

 Longman under the title of The Pioneers and Progress of English 

 Farming. 



The book has been out of print for twenty years. Written with 

 the confidence of comparative youth and inexperience, it expressed 

 as certainties many opinions which might now be modified, if 

 not withdrawn. But its motives were two convictions, which time 

 has rather strengthened than weakened. One was, that the small 

 number of persons who owned agricultural land might some day 

 make England the forcing-bed of schemes for land-nationalisation, 

 which countries, where the ownership of the soil rested on a more 

 democratic basis, repudiated as destructive of all forms of private 

 property. The other was, that a considerable increase in the number 

 of peasant ownerships, in suitable hands, on suitable land, and in 

 suitable localities, was socially, economically, and agriculturally 

 advantageous. 



Since 1888, the whole field of economic history has been so care- 

 fully and skilfully cultivated, that another work on a branch of 

 the subject might appear superfluous. But there still seemed to 

 be room for a consecutive history of English agriculture, written 

 from a practical point of view, and tracing the influence of the 

 progress of the industry on the social conditions of those engaged 

 in its pursuit. Great economic changes have resulted from small 

 alterations in the details of manufacturing processes. Similar 

 changes may often be explained by some little-noticed alterations 

 in farming practice. The introduction of the field-cultivation of 

 turnips, for example, was as truly the parent of a social revolution 

 as the introduction of textile machinery. The main object of 

 The Pioneers and Progress of English Farming, and, in greater 



