DIVISION IX. 



IMPLEMENTS AND MACHINERY OF ENGLISH FAEMING. 



CHAPTER I. 



AGRICULTURAL PKOGRESS. 



Up to a very recent period, tlie history of agri- 

 culture, in this country, presented a very 

 curious anomaly. A few facts were promi- 

 nently exhibited ; but the gradual progress of 

 It as an art, a manufacture, and as a branch of 

 commerce, was entirely unnoted and un- 

 chronicled : and an industrial occupation, the 

 capital of which, even thirty years ago, was 

 calculated at £217,000,000, had no history, 

 no Btatistics, no representative in the law or 

 the state — no board, no minister, no depart- 

 ment ; in fact, nothing. Yet, about a cen- 

 tury ago, this country was doing a large 

 trade as an exporter of corn. Between the 

 years 1773 and 1703, there was a sort of " pivot 

 period," when the exports and imports nearly 

 balanced each other : a slow but steady in- 

 closure of land, at the same time, began to 

 mark the consumption o*. a gradually increasing 

 trade and population ; the price of wheat ■ 

 averaged 45^. per quarter; and rents were 

 from 7s. to 10s. per acre ; so that the price of 

 a bushel of wheat was, in fact, about two- 

 thirds of the rent of an acre of land. There 

 was no account of the progress of inclosure 

 during the century ; but a committee of the 

 House of Commons, in 1797, computed the 

 total quantity at about 4,000,000 acres. 



In the present century, there has been a 

 detinite record kept of inclosures, of popu- 

 lation, of corn imported, of prices, and rent of 

 laud. From 1800 to 1810, the amount in- 

 closed was 1,057,980 acres ; the population of 

 Great Britain having increased 150,087 ; while 

 the quantity of wheat imported was 6,009,408 

 quarters. From 1810 to 1820, 1,410,930 acres 

 were inclosed ; the population increased to the 

 900 



extent of 1,978,523 ; but the imported wheat 

 was reduced to 4,585,780 quarters. From 

 1820 to 1830, 340,380 acres were inclosed, 

 and the population increased 2,161,495. In 

 the next decennary period, from 1830 to 1840, 

 236,070 acres only were added to the cultivated 

 soil, although the population increased by 

 2,249,648 ; while the imports gradually dimin- 

 ished. Thus, during the forty years, rather 

 more than 3,500,000 of acres were added to 

 the cultivated soil, against an increase of popu- 

 lation to the extent of 6,000,000 ; while the 

 foreign supplies did not amount, on the average, 

 to three weeks' consumption in the year, cal- 

 culated over the whole period. During this 

 time the country had passed through some 

 remarkable phases. While a large amount of 

 acreage had been brought into cultivation, the 

 circulation had been restricted to a metallic 

 currency, and wheat had fallen from 78s. 4<d.^ 

 at the close of the war, to 58s. 3d. And 

 nothing but the steady increase of population, 

 and the still more rapid increase of trade and 

 capital, could have sustained cultivation at the 

 point it had extended to ; nor was this done 

 without considerable reduction of rents, though 

 to nothing like what they had been before the 

 war. During the agitation for the repeal of 

 the corn-laws, it was thought that the measure, 

 if passed, would have the effect of throwing 

 much of the land out of cultivation ; but, on 

 the contrary, Britain was beginning to present 

 the opposite phenomenon of a population 

 overtaking the resource of fresh inclosure, and 

 compelled to have recourse to some other 

 means for increasing the produce of the soil. 

 Just at this period, agriculture begins to 



