146 RURAL ECONOMY OF ENGLAND. 



1815 that the labouring power of the nation has been 

 allowed to develop without hindrance, and what the re- 

 sult has been is well known. 



We must go back to the reign of Charles I. to find in 

 England a condition corresponding to the state in which 

 France was a hundred years later. A marked advance 

 took place from 1750. Representative government was 

 established, and agricultural prosperity increased under 

 it. That country, which produced hardly two millions 

 of quarters of wheat under the Stuarts, was already 

 reaping double in 1750, and was destined to increase 

 progressively to thirteen, which it now produces. Meat, 

 beer, wool, every agricultural commodity, followed the 

 same movement. But besides this, while the rest of 

 Europe was languishing under oppression, liberty and 

 security were shedding their genial rays over the fields of 

 Britain. With the opening of the eighteenth century, 

 Thomson celebrates these sacred blessings as the founda- 

 tion of all the rest. " Liberty," he says, " reigns here in the 

 humblest cottage, and brings with it plenty/' Elsewhere 

 he exclaims, addressing England, " Thy fields abound in 

 riches, the possession of which is secure to the contented 

 labourer." For a hundred and sixty years the noble in- 

 stitutions which give liberty and protection to persons 

 and property have existed without interruption, and for 

 a hundred and sixty years prosperity has followed in 

 their train. 



At the end of the eighteenth century, when the revolu- 

 tionary wars began, English agriculture was farther 

 advanced than ours at the present day. This is proved 

 by many documents ; among others the investigations of 

 Pitt, at the time he established the income-tax, and the 

 researches of Arthur Young and Sir John Sinclair. In 



