142 Mr. Curwen on the Means of 



of thirty thousand annually. Whether this may, or may not, have been the pro- 

 portion, or that the increase may have been more rapid at one period than another, 

 I shall not contend; but I think it will be acceded to me, that the checks on 

 population have been greater, since the year 1760, than they were for fifty years 

 preceding it. That the improvements in agriculture in the last fifty years, are more 

 than double what they were in the former. And in addition to this we must add 

 the inclosures of nearly goo wastes and common fields. 



The consequences resulting from all these circumstances must be a prodigious 

 increase of victual, tending to form a counterpoise to our increase of population 

 in the present reign. Besides, up to 1761, we had a surplus of 925,119 quarters 

 of wheat, which alone would have fed 925,000 persons. Five years after this pe- 

 riod, in 1766, we had barely sufficient for our consumption ; and from that period 

 we have been obliged, with little exception, to make great annual importations. 

 Such a change is too great and too sudden to be attributed to a progressive cause, 

 or annual increase of population, but must, I conceive, be looked for from other 

 causes. And I think we shall find a most important change taking place about 

 this period in the habits and modes of living of a considerable number of the 

 people, and producing an alteration in the system of agriculture. That other 

 causes have also contributed, I have no doubt. 



There are, unfortunately, no means of investigating, by positive proof, the alter- 

 ations, which must have taken place in the system of agriculture. It would, in my 

 humble opinion, be productive of essential benefit to the empire at large, should an 

 accurate survey be taken of the whole kingdom, and a register kept in every parish, 

 of the appropriation of each acre of ground. By thus ascertaining the various 

 crops, and the quantity being known of each kind of grain, Government would be 

 enabled to take timely steps to provide against deficiences, and to enforce economy, 

 ■which contributed largely in the late years of scarcity to the prevention of evils in- 

 finitely more grievous than those of price. 



That a great and most materia! change in agriculture must have happened, I strongly 

 suspect, within the last fifty years. The exportation in common years, up to 1761, 

 was nearly equal to the growth of three hundred thousand acres. The largest year* 

 of importation since 1790 was adequate to the produce of nine hundred thousand 

 acres, very little short of a third of the whole growth of the kingdom. Estimating 

 ten millions of people in England and Wales, and our colonies, to be fed with 



