PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. . 729 
of the economic question that is suggested by a study of the records of these 
societies and of the works of the early Improvers. Their first contention was 
that agriculture was a subject worthy of study for its own sake, their second 
that it was worthy of study for the sake of the nation. The appeal to self- 
interest occurs, it is true, but it is not insisted on as being the all-important 
consideration. 
At the present time, when so much of our food comes from other countries, we 
do not, perhaps, sufficiently realise the extent to which the commercial prosperity 
of Britain was built up by the aid of, or depended upon an improved agriculture ; 
but the relationship of industrial progress to agriculture was never lost sight of 
by the early Improvers, and not only the food-supply of the industrial classes, 
but the system of agriculture best suited for rearing the type of worker required 
for developing new industries was carefully considered by them. 
Within recent years the Improvers of the eighteenth and early nineteenth 
centuries have been much criticised for their land policy, their enclosures, and 
their treatment of labourers; but one thing at least the agriculturists of 1760- 
1815 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 1831 supported sixteen millions. When we reflect that the imple- 
ments of husbandry were rude, that thorough drainage had not been intro- 
duced, that artificial manures (except crushed bones) were hardly known, that 
oileakes 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 diflicult to obtain and interest high, those of us who know some- 
thing about the ordinary work of the farmer can realise the strenuous efforts 
that must have been necessary to wring from land a sufficiency to feed this 
rapidly 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 any 
considerable part of the people on imported food. ‘To supply the United King- 
dom with the single article of wheat,’ he says, ‘ would call for the employment of 
more than twice the amount of shipping which now annually enters our ports.’ 
Nor was it for man only that an increased food-supply was required ; between 
1760 and 1831 there was a great addition to the horse population, owing to the 
improvement of roads and the substitution of horses for oxen on farms. To the 
increase in the number of horses contemporary writers attributed in some degree 
the high prices ruling at the end of the eighteenth century. 
Part of the additional food-supply was obtained by enclosing about seven 
million acres-of land between 1760 and 1834; 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 all 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 experimental 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 agriculturists were called upon to pro- 
duce more food. As we have seen, they were able to doub’> the food-supply in 
seventy vears. 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 Mackintosh, the history of this country must have been very 
different. Behind the military and naval victories which made Britain a great 
Power, was a commissariat supported by the agricultural classes. Tor the great 
