230 HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE 



members, with honorary and corresponding members. It was 

 not a Government department in the modern sense of the term, 

 but a society for the encouragement of agriculture, as the 

 Royal Society is for the encouragement of science. It was, 

 indeed, supported by parliamentary grants, receiving a sum of 

 ;^3,oco a year, but the Government had only a limited control 

 over its affairs through the ex-officio members, among whom 

 were the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, the Lord Chan- 

 cellor, the First Lord of the Admiralty, and the Speaker. 



The first president was Sir John Sinclair, and the first 

 secretary Arthur Young, with a salary of ;^400 a year, which 

 he thought insufficient.^ The first task of the new board was 

 that of preparing statistical accounts of English agriculture, 

 and it was intended to take in hand the commutation of tithes, 

 which would have been a great boon to farmers, with whom 

 the prevailing system of collecting tithes was very unpopular ; 

 but the Primate's opposition stopped this. The board ap- 

 pointed lecturers, procured a reward for Elkington for his 

 draining system, encouraged Macadam in his plans for 

 improving roads, and Meikle the inventor of the thrashing 

 machine, and obtained the removal of taxes on draining tiles, 

 and other taxes injurious to agriculture. It also recommended 

 the allotment system, and Sinclair desired 3 acres and a cow 

 for every industrious cottager. During the abnormally high 

 prices of provisions from 1794-6, the quartern loaf in London 

 in 1795 being is. 6d., though next year it dropped to y^d.,^ the 

 board made experiments in making bread with substitutes for 

 wheat, which resulted in a public exhibition of eighty different 

 sorts of bread. Its efforts were generally followed by increased 

 zeal among agriculturists ; but Sinclair, an able but impetuous 

 man,^ appears to have taken things too much into his own 

 hands and pushed them too speedily. 



^ Autobiography, p. 242. 

 ^ Eden, State of the Poor, i. 18. 



'^ * Had his industry been under the direction of a better judgement, he 

 would have been an admirable president.'— Young, Autobiography, p. 316. 



