45 



a Government Department, but rather a chartered Society with 

 many ex-officio, ordinary, and honorary members, and a Government 

 grant of 3000 a year (Francs 75 750). 



It was formed on the suggestion of Sir John Sinclair to promote 

 improved methods of husbandry and to encourage a development 

 of agricultural production, in an age when England was seriously 

 concerned with the sufficiency of the food supply of a population 

 not one-fourth of the present. The old Board, under the secretary- 

 ship of Arthur Young, doubtless succeeded in giving an impulse to 

 the enclosure and cultivation of unproductive land. Its local surveys, 

 moreover, provided a valuable record of the agricultural conditions 

 of Great Britain a hundred years ago. 



The present Board of Agriculture, or, to give it its full title, 

 as expanded by later legislation, " the Board of Agriculture and 

 Fisheries," is the youngest Department of the State. No doubt 

 another office " the Board of Education " came into its statutory 

 designation at a still more recent date ; but the change in that case 

 was one of name only. The Board of Agriculture Act of 1889, on 

 the other hand, not only took over and concentrated a series of 

 duties previously scattered among older offices or casually admini- 

 stered, after a fashion now generally discarded as inconvenient, 

 by separate Commissions, but actually established a new Ministry. 

 The designation of " Board " as applied to certain Governments is 

 sometimes misapprehended ; but it has its explanation in the develop- 

 ment of English history, and even the apparent anomalies of orga- 

 nization mark successive changes in the relations of the Executive 

 Government and the Legislature. The Boards are indeed survivals 

 of the older committee of the Privy Council, and they are now 

 manned by high officers of State, with departmental duties of their 

 own, while the President of each Board is alone the Minister re- 

 sponsible to Parliament for the doings of his office. 



The Board of Agriculture, besides its President, has a nominal roll 

 of members, comprising technically all the Secretaries of State, the 

 Lord President of the Council, the Secretary for Scotland, the First 

 Lord of the Treasury, and the Chancellors of the Exchequer and of 

 the Duchy of Lancaster, but the executive duties are discharged by 

 the usual establishment of a Ministry, with Parliamentary head, 

 Permanent Secretary, Assistant Secretaries, and Staff. 



The cattle plague of 1865 forced into prominence the question 

 of the necessity for some distinctive representation of the agric- 

 ultural interest, but it was not until the agricultural depression 



