24- 



NATURE 



[October 24, igia 



"The Rural Socrates" (second edition, 1764) remarks : 

 " It is no longer a controvertible point whether the 

 science of Agriculture merits the distinguished atten- 

 tion of philosophical minds, and is the proper study 

 of the most enliehtened understanding; since the proof 

 is beyond contradiction, that a judicious rural economy 

 is one of the chief supports of the prosperity of a 

 State." In Henry Home's dedication of "The Gentle- 

 man Farmer " to the president of the Royal Society 

 (1776), we find this passage: "Agriculture justly 

 claims to be the chief of arts, it enjovs beside the 

 signal pre-eminence of combining deep philosophy 

 with useful practice " ; and in the preface to the same 

 work he says : " Our gentlemen who live in the 

 country have become active and industrious. They 

 embellish their fields, improve their lands, and give 

 bread to thousands." He contrasts these pursuits 

 with those whicli formerly occupied the country gentle- 

 man : " His train of ideas was confined to dogs, 

 horses, hares, foxes ; not a rational idea entered the 

 train, not a spark of patriotism, nothing done for the 

 public." 



How unlike the state of affairs described by Home 

 were the conditions in a country resembling Britain, 

 but in which the spirit of the improver had not been 

 awakened, may be indicated by a quotation from a 

 report on the farming of Holstein and Mecl<lenburg 

 sent to Sir John Sinclair in 1794. The writer, M. 

 Voght, states that the agriculture of North Germany 

 was fifty years behind that of England, and explains 

 its depressed state by saying : " Our noblemen are no 

 farmers, and our farmers no gentlemen ; our authors 

 on agriculture possess no cuhivated land, and those 

 few who could give to the public the precious results 

 of long experience and labour would starve their 

 printer for want of readers." 



The landowner of North Germany, towards the end 

 of the eighteenth century, was, indeed, in verv much 

 the same state as the landowner of Britain in the first 

 quarter; and it is when we compare the conditions 

 described by Lisle, Mackintosh, Home, and Voght 

 that we begin to appreciate how much British farm- 

 ing owes to such associations as the Royal Society of 

 England and the Honourable Society of Improver's of 

 Scotland. Had not the interest of landowners, and 

 of the educated classes generally, been secured, there 

 is no reason to suppose that the agriculture of Britain 

 in 1704 would have been markedly in advance of that 

 of Germany. 



Both in England and Scotland the first im- 

 petus towards progress was economic in its 

 character, and throughout the seventeenth and 

 eighteenth centuries economic causes were con- 

 stantly accelerating the improvement of agricul- 

 ture ; but we must not make the mistake of supposing 

 that a rise in prices necessarily brings about improve- 

 ments in husbandry. A motive for improvement is 

 provided and more labour mav be drawn to agricul- 

 ture, but it does not follow that there will be a real 

 advance, and that there will be more food produced 

 for the use of workers in other industries. Without 

 changes of system, i.e. without improvements based 

 on new discoveries, the effect of a rise of prices in a 

 self-supporting country would merely be to alter the 

 proportion of the population engaged in agriculture, 

 and to form congested districts. This was the danger 

 that threatened England earlv in the seventeenth 

 and Scotland early in the eighteenth centuries ; but 

 fortunately for each country an intellectual revival 

 followed close on the rise in prices, and attention was 

 directed not only to the necessity for more food, but 

 to the need for improvements which would afford a 

 surplus^ for the support of the industrial classes. 



Within recent years the improvers of the eighteenth 

 and early nineteenth centuries have been much criti- 



No. 2243, v'OL. go] 



cised for their land policy, their enclosures, and their 

 treatment of labourers ; but one thing at least the 

 agriculturists of 1760-1S15 saw more clearly than their 

 modern critics — they recognised that if their country 

 was to become a great manufacturing nation, more 

 food must be grown ; and to this task they applied 

 themselves so successfully that, as Porter points out» 

 the land of Great Britain, which in 1760 supported 

 about eight million inhabitants, in 183 1 supported 

 sixteen millions. When we reflect that the imple- 

 ments of husbandry were rude, that thorough drainage 

 had not been introduced, that artificial manures (ex- 

 cept crushed bones) were scarcely known, that oilcakes 

 were scarce, that grain was too valuable to be given 

 freely to cattle, that in bad seasons live-stock had to 

 be starved so that men might be fed, that in good 

 seasons prices fell rapidly, and with them farming 

 profits, and that credit was difficult to obtain and 

 interest high, those of us who know something about 

 the ordinary work of the farmer can realise tht- 

 strenuous efforts that must have been necessary to 

 wring from land a sufficiency to feed this rapidiv 

 growing nation and to maintain it in health and 

 comparative comfort. Even as late as 1836 Porter 

 shows that it would have been impossible to feed anv 

 considerable part of the people on imported food. 

 "To supply the United Kingdom with the single 

 article of wheat," he says, " would call for the em- 

 ployment of more than twice the amount of shipping 

 which now annually enters our ports." 



Part of the additional food-supply was obtained bv 

 enclosing about seven million acres of land between 

 1760 and 1814; but as more than three times this 

 area must already have been enclosed, as much of the 

 land enclosed after 1760 was of poor quality, and as 

 ail of it had formerly contributed in some degree to 

 the food-supply of the country, it is obvious that 

 between 1760 and 1834 the rate of production per 

 acre must have been largely increased. 



Improvements in the art of agriculture cannot be 

 rapidly introduced ; there is first of all an experi- 

 mental stage, and when improved methods have been 

 learned they pass but slowly from district to district. 

 Before any marked advance in the art can take place, 

 there must therefore occur a period during which a 

 foundation is being laid. It was about 1760 that our 

 population began to increase rapidly, and it was then 

 that agr'culturists were called upon to produce more 

 food, .^s we have seen, they were able to double the 

 food-supply in seventy years. It cannot be doubted 

 that this marvellous feat was rendered possible by 

 the pioneer societies of the preceding century, or that 

 it was the spirit of the improver, which the early 

 associations had fostered, that animated the men from 

 whom Arthur Young and Sir John Sinclair learned. 

 If, in place of those enterprising agriculturists whose 

 improvements are described in the reports of the first 

 Board of Agriculture, our shires had been occupied 

 by the dull-witted country gentlemen referred to by 

 Lisle, or the "upstart sparks" condemned by Mack- 

 intosh, the history of this country must have been 

 very different. Behind the military and naval vic- 

 tories which made Britain a great Power, was a com- 

 missariat supported by the agricultural classes. For 

 the great industrial army which the genius of Ark- 

 wright. Watt, and other inventors provided with 

 employment there was raised an ever-increasing food- 

 supply. Political and industrial development alike 

 depended on the rate of increase of the population, and 

 this again on the rate at which the means of subsist- 

 ence could be raised from British soil. 



Although the economic position has undergone a 

 revolution there is still work for the improver; no 

 longer indeed do our Industrial classes depend for sub- 



