Book I. AGRICULTURE IN THE BRITISH ISLES. 125 



ten years after, several acts followed for tlie counties of Edinburgh and Lanark, ana 1 for 

 making the roads between Edinburgh and Glasgow. The benefit which agriculture has 

 derived from good roads it would not be easy to estimate. The want of them was one 

 great cause of the slow progress of the art in former times. At present, all die improve- 

 ments introduced by M'Adam in the construction and preservation of the roads of 

 England, are spreading with equal rapidity and good effect in Scotland. 



77_. The relaxing of the rigour of entails, and abrogating the feudal system, greatly bene- 

 fited the agriculture of Scotland. Tlie first was effected by an act in 1770, which re- 

 laxed the rigour of strict entails, and extended the powers of proprietors, in so far as 

 regards the improvement of their estates, and the granting of leases. 



773. But tlie general progress of agriculture in Britain, from the revolution to the 

 middle of the eighteenth century, was by no means so considerable as from the great 

 exportation of corn we should be led to imagine. " Tlie gradual advance in the price of 

 land produce, soon after the year 1760, occasioned by the increase of population, and 

 of wealth derived from manufactures and commerce, has given a more powerful stimulus 

 to rural industry, augmented agricultural capital in a greater degree, and called forth 

 a more skilful and enterprising race of cultivators, dian all the laws for regulating the 

 corn trade could ever have effected. Most of the inventions for increasing produce and 

 economising labour have either been introduced, or improved and greatly extended, since 

 that time ; and by means of both, the free surplus has been vastly increased lor the supply 

 of the general consumption. The passing of more than three thousand bills of enclosure, 

 in the late reign, is a proof how much more rapidly the cultivation of new land has 

 proceeded than in the former period : and the garden-like appearance of the country, as 

 well as the striking improvement in the condition of all classes of the rural population, 

 display, in the most decided manner, the skill and the success with which tliis great 

 branch of national industry is now followed throughout the greater part of Britain." 



774. Since the conclusion of the American war in 178i>, " improvement has pro- 

 ceeded with singular rapidity in every district ; and while the rental rolls of proprietors 

 have been doubled, tripled, and quadrupled, the condition of the tenantry, and of the 

 lower ranks, has been ameliorated almost in a proportional degree." {Ed. Ency. art. 



775. Since the period of 1815, agriculture has sustained a severe shock from the fall of 

 prices, occasioned by the lessened circulation of currency, the necessary preliminary to a 

 return to a currency of the precious metals. In this shock many hundreds of fanners lost 

 all their capital, and were obliged to become operatives to others ; while some, more for- 

 tunate, contrived to retain as much of the wreck of their property as enabled them to 

 emigrate to other countries. Cleghorn, whose pamphlet on the depressed state of agri- 

 culture was honoured with the prize of the Highland Society of Scotland, thinks this loss 

 cannot have been less than one year's rental of the whole island. " The replies sent to 

 the circular letter of the Board of Agriculture, regarding the agricultural state of the 

 kingdom, in February, March, and April, 1816, furnish a body of evidence which cannot 

 be controverted, and exhibit a picture of widely spread ruin among the agricultural 

 classes, and of distress among all that immediately depend upon them, to which there is 

 probably no parallel." (See Cleghorn on the Depressed State of Agriculture, 1S22.) After 

 upwards of fourteen years' severe suffering, both by landlords and tenants, things have now 

 assumed a more stationary condition. Rents have been greatly lowered every where in 

 proportion to the fall of prices and the rise of parochial burdens, and both fanners and 

 landlords are beginning gradually to recover themselves. 



Sect. II. Professional History of Agriculture, from the Revolution to the 



present Time. 



776. In England, from the restoration to the middle of the eighteenth century, very little 

 improvement took place, either in the cultivation of the soil, or in the management of 

 live stock. Even clover and turnips (the great support of the present improved system 

 of agriculture) were confined to a few districts, and at the close of this period were scarcely 

 cultivated at all by common farmers in the northern parts of the island. From the Whole 

 Art of Husbandry, published by Mortimer in 1706, a work of considerable merit, it does 

 not appear that any improvement was made on his practices till near the end of last cen- 

 tury. In those districts where clover and rye-grass were cultivated, they were cut green, 

 and used for soiling as at present. Turnips were sown broadcast, hand hoed, and used for 

 feeding sheep and cattle, as they were used in Houghton's time, and are still in most 

 districts of England. 



777. In the beginning of the eighteenth century, a considerable improvement in the process 

 of culture was introduced by Jethro Tull, a cultivator of Berkshire, who began to drill 

 wheat and other crops about the year 1701, and whose Horse-hoeing Husbandry was pub- 

 lished in 1731. " In giving a short account of the innovations of this eccentric writer, it is 



