629 PRACTICE OF AGRICULTURE. Part III. 



Chap. VI. 

 Improvement of Estates by the Establishment of Mills, Manifactories, Villages, 



Markets, ^-c. 



3836. Connected with the laying out of roads and canals, is the establishment of different 

 scenes of mam factorial industry. The forced introduction of these will be attended with 

 little benefit ; but where the natural and political circumstances are favourable, the im- 

 provement is of the greatest consequence, by retaining on the same estate, as it were, the 

 profits of the grower, the manufacturer, and to a certain extent of the consumer. 



3837. The establishment of mills and manufactories to be impelled by water, neces- 

 sarily depends on the abundance and situation of that material ; and it should be M'ell 

 considered beforehand, whether the water might not be as well employed in irrigation, 

 or how far irrigation will be hindered by the establishment of a mill. In the state of 

 society in which water corn-mills were first erected, they were doubtlessly considered as 

 blessings to the country. There were then no flour manufactories : and it was more 

 convenient for the inhabitants to carry their corn to a neighbouring mill, than to grind 

 it less effectually, by hand, at home. Hence, the privileges and immunities of manorial 

 mills. To secure so great a comfort, every tenant of a manor would willingly agree to 

 send his corn to be ground at the lord's mill ; and, perhaps, was further obliged to stipu- 

 late to pay toll for the whole of his growth ; though it were sent out of the manor unground. 



3838. In Scotland, this impolitic, and now absurd, custom was only lately given up : till when no farmer 

 dared to send his corn to market, until he had delivered a proportional quantity to the proprietor or the 

 occupier of the mill to which he was thirled, or had previously stipulated to pay him thirlage for what he 

 might send away ; this arbitrary regulation operating, like tithes, to decrease the growth of corn. 



3839. In England and Ireland, however, no restriction of this sort at present exists : but, in the remote 

 parts of the north of England, there are mills which claim (or lately claimed) the exclusive right of grind- 

 ing the whole of the corn which the inhabitants of the respective parishes or manors required to be ground 

 for their own use, suffering none to be sent out of the parish for the purpose of grinding. In the more 

 western counties, where gristmills are still the schoolsof parochial scandal, something of this sort remains, 

 and is piously preserved in modern leases : but, in the kingdom at large, grist mills are now going fast 

 into disuse. Even working people purchase flour, instead of corn ; and, whether in a private or a public 

 light, this is an eligible practice. They can purchase a sort which is suited to their circumstances, and 

 they know the quality and the quantity of what they carry home ; whereas, in the proverbial rascality 

 of grist millers, they have no certainty as to either : besides, in a flour mill there is no waste ; every 

 particle may be said to be converted to its proper use. 



3840. J valuable property belonging to modern fiour mamifactories, is their not requiring every brook 

 and rivulet of the kingdom to work them. In Norfolk, a great share of the wheat grown in that corn 

 county is manufactured into flour by the means of windmills : and such are modern inventions, that neither 

 wind nor water is any longer necessary to the due manufacture of flour ; the steam engine affording, 

 if not the most eligible, at least the most constant and equable power. 



3841. The most eligible kinds of water-mills are, the tide-mill and the current mill : the former placed in 

 creeks, inlets, bays, estuaries, or tide rivers ; and the latter in the current of a river. There are many 

 situations. Marshal observes, in which these species of mills may be erected with profit to proprietors, and 

 the community ; and without any injury to the landed property, or the agricultural produce of the country. 

 He is of opinion that numerous river mills existing in different parts of the country are unnecessary to the 

 present state of society. 



3842. Grist mills may be still required in some remote situations : but, seeing the number of flour mills 

 which are now dispersed over almost every part of the kingdom, seeing also the present facility of carriage 

 by land and water, and seeing, at the same time, the serious injuries which river mills entail on agricul- 

 ture. Marshal recommends land proprietors to reduce their number, as fast as local circumstances will allow. 



3843. Tlie inducement to establish manifactories depends on a variety of circum- 

 stances, as well as on a supply of water. Among these may be mentioned the price of 

 labour, convenience for carriage, export or import, existence of the raw material at or near 

 the spot, as in the case of iron works, potteries, &c. In England, while t*he poor laws 

 exist, the establishment of any concern that brings together a large mass of population 

 will always be attended with a considerable risk to land-owners ; though it is a certain 

 mode, in the first instance, of raising the price of land, and giving a general stimulus to 

 every description of industry. 



3844. A populous manufactory, even while it flourishes, according to Marshal, operates mischievously 

 in an agricultural district by propagating habits of extravagance and immorality among the lower order of 

 tenantry, as well as by rendering farm labourers and servants dissatisfied with their condition in life ; and 

 the more it flourishes, and the higher wages it pays, the more mischievous it becomes in this respect. 

 Lands bear a rental value in proportion to the rate of living in the district in which they lie ; so that while 

 a temporary advantage is reaped, by an increased price of market produce, the foundation of a permanent 

 disadvantage is laid ; and, whenever the manufactory declines, the lands of its neighbourhood have not 

 only its vices and extravagances entailed upon them, but have the vicious, extravagant, helpless manu- 

 facturers themselves to maintain. This accumulation of evils, however, belongs particularly to that 

 description of manufacture which draws numbers together in one place ; where diseases of the body and 

 the mind are jointly propagated ; and where no other means of support is taught than that of some parti- 

 cular branch or branchlet of manufacture. But all these evils, belonging to the first introduction of 

 manufactures on a great scale, will be cured with the progress of education and refinement among the 

 operative manufacturers : it is already improved in comparison with what it was in Marshal's time. 



3845. Cottages. Wherever cottages for any class of men are built, whether singly or 

 congregated, they ought never to be vdthout an eighth or a fourth of an acre of garden 

 ground. It is observed in the The Code of Agriculture, that " where a labourer or country 

 tradesman has only a cottage to protect him from the inclemency of the weather, he can- 

 not have the same attachment to his dwelling, as if he had some land annexed to it ; 

 nor is such a state of the labourer so beneficial to the community. When a labourer 

 has a garden, his children learn to dig and weed, and in that spanner some of their 



