The Mismanagement of Landed Property. 365 



both as regards their labour and their meat.^ Whether King 

 George used all oxen or mixed teams is doubtful ; he was a 

 champion of ox labour, but, as we have before shown, his 

 chroniclers differ as to his practice, Young asserting that on 

 the Royal farms at Windsor no single horse was used for 

 tillage, though the number of working oxen exceeded two 

 hundred ; but Pearce, who wrote the Berkshire Report for 

 the Board of Agriculture, and who was the nephew of Kent, 

 the King's farm manager, asserts that mixed teams were used." 



The French too, deceived by the statistics of authorities who 

 had based their conclusions on false premisses, had begun to 

 to discard the ox for draught purposes. Men like the Marquis 

 de Mirabeau had been pointing out that oxen as beasts of 

 burden were entirely confined to the parsimonious economy of 

 petite culture^ and that horses were universally used on the 

 large holdings of advanced agriculturists. But, as Young 

 demonstrated, Mirabeau omitted to mention that this proved 

 nothing, because the draught beast of the wealthy farmer Avas 

 kept in a warm stable and fed on the fat of the land all the 

 year, while his wretched bovine substitute was let loose by 

 his impoverished owner on the commons to pick up an in- 

 sufficient Hvelihood anyhow.^ 



But whichever species of beast was in use, it is clear that, 

 as compared with the present day, double the necessary labour 

 was required to draw the ponderous plough then in fashion. 

 The celebrated author of The Pirate dubs the old Scot's plough 

 "a heavy cartload of timber," which would appear "no less 

 strange to the Scottish farmer of this present day, than the 

 corslets and casques of the soldiers of Cortes might seem to a 

 regiment of our own army." And yet in the Farmei's^ Maga- 

 zine for July, 1800, a Scotch farmer describes the Hertford- 

 shire implement as worse still. " An old Scottish plough," he 

 says, " is but a child in comparison with this giant. Five 



^ Annals of Agriculture, vol. iv. p. 329. 



■■* Compare Six Months' Tour, vol. iii. pp. 163-186; Pearce's Bejyort of 

 Berks to the Board of Agriculture ; and Gentleman's Magazine, Dec, 

 1779. See also page 345 of this History (Part II.). 



3 Six Months' Tour, Letter xxxili. vol. iii. p. 185. 



