58 THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



not being interested parties, but only vigilantly observant 

 onlookers, and willing learners, have long since — about the 

 middle of the past century — discerned in the progress of 

 our Agriculture the welcome stimulating effect of Free Trade. 

 " It was high farming and the liberal use of fertilisers," 

 so wrote, among others of high authority, the late Pro- 

 fessor J. A. Stockhardt in the days of his greatest influence, 

 " which raised British Agriculture to its enviable height 

 and carried it triumphantly over the crisis of the Repeal 

 of the Corn Laws." And such high farming and liberal 

 manuring were directly provoked by the advent of Free 

 Trade. " During the era of Protection," so writes Mr. 

 Prothero with respect to this matter, " landlords and far- 

 mers had learnt to rely too entirely upon Parliamentary 

 help in difficulties. They had been prone to expect that 

 alterations in the protective duties would turn the balance 

 between the success and failure of their harvests. Now, 

 disappointment after disappointment had taught them the 

 useful lesson that they could expect no immediate assistance 

 from legislative interference and that, if they wanted aid, 

 they must help themselves." Just the same as had hap- 

 pened during the preceding great war, once more to quote 

 Mr. Prothero, " the struggle in which the country was 

 engaged quickened the activity and industry of the popu- 

 lation, stimulated agricultural improvements, sharpened the 

 inventive faculties to economise both in money and in 

 labour." 



Farmers learnt to put their best leg forward. They 

 thought out economic improvements, methods to increase 

 yield. It was then that we took to the liberal use of ferti- 

 lisers, which a bountiful Providence had mercifully placed 

 at our disposal in new forms, at the same time that Science 

 had, through her students — foremost among them Professor 

 Liebig, whose epoch-making book appeared in 1840 — taught 

 us how best to apply them. And in this way, under the 

 powerful stimulation of need, fecundating our natural 

 resources of inventiveness and practical sense, we produced 

 the prosperous Agriculture of which Sir James Caird sang 

 the praises in 1850 — as did a whole chorus of German pro- 



