318 AGRICULTURAL DEPRESSION AND POOR LAW 



prosperity appeared. During the war, farming improvements had 

 been stimulated by the prospect of increased profits. In peace, when 

 once the new conditions were accepted, and some degree of confidence 

 restored, adversity proved an efficient goad. Without improved 

 practices there was no prospect of any profits at all. Yet down to 

 the accession of Queen Victoria there is no substantial progress to 

 chronicle. The characteristics of the period are a great loss of 

 ground and a partial recovery. 



The inflated prices of the war had conferred, from one point of 

 view, a great advantage on the agriculture of the country. They 

 brought under the plough districts which, but for their stimulus, 

 might never have been brought into cultivation, areas that were 

 forced into productiveness by the sheer weight of the metal that was 

 poured into them. Money made by farming had been eagerly 

 reinvested in the improvement of the land. For the same purpose 

 banks had advanced money to occupiers on the security of crops 

 and stock which every year seemed to rise in value. Farmers had 

 been able to meet their engagements out of loans, and wait their own 

 time for realising their produce. Better horses were kept, better 

 cattle and sheep bred. Land was limed, marled, or manured. 

 Wastes were brought under cultivation ; large areas were cleared 

 of stones in order to give an arable surface ; heaths were cleared, 

 bogs drained, buildings erected, roads constructed. The history of 

 Northumberland strongly illustrates these brighter aspects of a 

 gloomy period. John Grey of Dilston, 1 " the Black Prince of the 

 North," one of the most enterprising and skilful agriculturists of the 

 day, played a conspicuous part in the transformation of his county. 

 Born in 1785, and early called through the death of his father to the 

 management of property, he lived in the midst of the agricultural 

 revolution. When his father first settled in Glendale, the plain was 

 a forest of wild broom. He took his axe, and, like a backwoodsman, 

 cleared a space on which to begin his farming operations. The 

 country was then wholly unenclosed, without roads or signposts. 

 Cattle were lost for days in the broom forests. The inhabitants 

 were as wild as their home, the Cheviot herdsmen " ferocious and 

 sullen," the rural population " uneducated, ill-clothed, and barbar- 

 ous." But the character of the soil was such as to attract skill and 

 industry. Men of the same stamp as Grey, or the Culleys, settled 

 in the fertile vales, and by their spirited farming transformed into 

 1 Memoirs of John Grey of Dilston, by Josephine E. Butler (1869). 



