PEESIDENTIAI. ADDRESS. 



761 



shares into swords is demonstrated by the fact that when they took to soldier- 

 ing they pub the nation for the first and only time under what is now termed 

 militarism ; that is, government controlled by the Army. In the last battle 

 fought on English soil the yeomen and peasants of the West Country proved, 

 amid the butchery of Sedgemoor, that bucolic lethargy can be roused to 

 desperate courage. Indeed, through all our island story, since the English 

 yeomen first broke the power of mediseval chivalry and established the supre- 

 macy of infantry in modern warfare, it has been from the rural districts that 

 the nation has drawn its military strength. Even in the present war, when the 

 armies of the Empire have been drawn from all classes of the community, 

 the old county regiments and the yeomanry squadrons with their roots in the 

 countryside have proved once more that the peaceful rustic is as undismayed 

 on the field of battle as on the fields of peace. 



It is, however, in his pacific rather than in his belligerent aspect that the 

 British farmer now claims our attention, and, before considering the position 

 of farming in the present war, we may briefly glance at its position when a 

 century ago the nation was similarly engaged in a vital struggle. 



From February 1793 imtil 1815, with two brief intervals, we were at war, 

 and the conflict embraced not only practically all Europe but America as well. 

 The latter half of the eighteenth century had witnessed a revolution of British 

 agriculture. The work of Jethro Tull, 'Turnip' Townshend, Robert Bakewell, 

 and their disciples, had established the principles of modern farming. Coke of 

 Holkham had begun his missionary work; Arthur Young was preaching the 

 gospel of progress; and in 1803 Humphry Davy delivered his epoch-making 

 lectures on agricultural chemistry. Common-field cultivation, with all its hin- 

 drances to progress, was rapidly being extinguished, accelerated by the General 

 Inclosure Act of 1801. A general idea of the state of agriculture may be 

 obtained from the estimates made by W. T. Comber of the area in England and 

 Wales under different crops in 1808. There were then no official returns, which, 

 indeed, were not started until 1866 ; but these estimates have been generally 

 accepted as approximately accurate and are at any rate the nearest approach we 

 have to definite information. 



T give for comparison the figures from the agricultural returns of 1914, which 

 approximately correspond to those of the earlier date : 



Wheat 



Barley and rye 



Oats and beans 



Clover, rye-grass, &c 



Roots and cabbages cultivated by the plough 



Fallow 



Hop grounds 



Land depastured by cattle .... 



1S08 



Acres 



3,160.000 



861,000 



2,872,000 



1,149,000 



1.1.50,000 



2.297,000 



36,000 



17,479,000 



1914 



Acres 



1.807.498 



],.5o8,670 



2.223.642 



2..558,735 



2,077.487 



.340,737 



36,661 



16,115,750 



The returns in 1914 comprise a larger variety of crops than were cultivated 

 in 1808. Potatoes, for instance, were then only just beginning to be grown as 

 a field-crop, and I have included them, together with Kohl-rabi and rape, among 

 ' roots and cabbages.' 



The populatioii of England and Wales in 1801 was 8,892,5.36, so that there 

 ■were 35-^- acres under wheat for every hundred inhabitants. In 1914 the popu- 

 lation was 37,302,983, and for every hundred inhabitants there were 5 acres 

 under wheat. 



The yield of wheat during the twenty years ending 1795 was estimated at 

 3 qrs. per acre' ; in 1914 it was 4 qrs. per acre. The quantity of home-grown 

 wheat per head of population was therefore 8^ bushels in 1808, and 1^ bushels 



' Report of Select Committee on the means of promoting the cultivation and 

 improvement of the waste, nninclosed and unproductive lands of the Kingdom. 

 1795. ^ 



