26 PEOGEESS IN OTHEE COUNTEIES 



Tull successfully cultivated turnips on his estate in the 

 last decade of the seventeenth century, but the practice 

 did not spread to his neighbours for twenty years, or 

 become common for another fifty years. 



It is not possible to approve of all the circumstances 

 which attended this revolution of land tenure in 

 England ; but of the enormous agricultural progress 

 that took place as a consequence there can be no 

 doubt. The land was greatly improved, and so were 

 methods of cultivation, breeding and feeding. Agri- 

 cultural production was greatly stimulated, and the 

 increased produce enabled England to meet the strain 

 of the Napoleonic wars, to bear the burden of ad- 

 ditional taxation and to feed the vast centres of com- 

 mercial industry, which sprang up at a time when 

 food could not have been provided from another 

 country. The penalty that the country paid was the 

 divorce of the peasantry from the soil, and the ex- 

 tinction of the commoners and open-field farmers. 

 There can be no doubt that injustice was frequently 

 inflicted on people who lost their rights, and that this 

 injustice was keenly felt during the periods of low 

 wages and high prices, which subsequently occurred. 

 Some hardship is probably inevitable in introducing 

 reforms of this kind, and, human nature being what 

 it is, it must be recognised that such a movement 

 provides opportunities for injustice and for the op- 

 pression of the weak by the strong ; but the progress 

 aimed at was secured, and in the matter of agriculture, 

 England rose from a very backward state to a leading 



