124 The Nineteenth Century 



rick-burning in Cambridgeshire, as in England generally. The com- 

 missioners appointed to investigate the causes of these disturbances found 

 "distress and want of employment" all through the County/ 



Of course, all years were not equally bad, and amidst many variations 

 of statement and opinion, it is difficult to assess the degree of distress at any 

 particular moment.' But tlie weight of Mr ThumaU's evidence, in 1836, 

 leaves no doubt about the general picture.3 Land in a neglected state was 

 "every day increasing in quantity" owing to the "low price of agricul- 

 tural produce".^ On the other hand, he thought that, as yet, no land had 

 been "thrown out of cultivation". Still, the condition of the tenantry 

 was "verging on insolvency ".5 Rick-burning was frequent, and several 

 of his best and honest labourers were threatening to rob on the highway 

 before they would "go to the union work house". They were "ripe for 

 everything in the world", ready to be stirred into "a state of revolution". 



The accession of Queen Victoria in 1837 coincided with the beginnings 

 of improvement. The formation of the Royal Agricultural Society in the 

 following year was at once a symptom of revival and an aid to prosperity. 

 Despite ups and downs, the decade that followed was marked by an 

 advancement that reflected itself in one of England's most agricultural of 

 counties. In his survey of 1847, Samuel Jonas declared that "few counties, 

 if any, have improved more in cultivation than Cambridgeshire has lately 

 done".^ 



All the open common-fields have been enclosed (with the exception of five or 

 sLx parishes), and instead of a system of cropping so exhausting to the land as a 

 fallow and two white-straw crops in succession, with other men's flocks of sheep 

 eating up your food and preventing improvement, wc now see the land farmer 

 on the four course system — the best that can be adopted, unless on very fine land. 



' Parliamentary Papers (1834), xxxiv, Appendix B, Pt. v, to the Report on Poor 

 Laws, pp. 49-72. 



" Thus a calculation of the amount of unemployment in Cambridgeshire in 1830- 

 1831 stated that "the total number of unemployed labourers in 156 parishes [out of a 

 total of 164] in Cambridgeshire was 8ri; not one sixteenth of the total number of 

 labourers, very Httle more than five men being so reckoned to a parish, and one man 

 to a population of 169". And, again, "we cannot suppose any to remain unem- 

 ployed during the three months which hay and com harvest last". Parliamentary 

 Papers (1834), xxxvii, Appendix C to the Report on Poor Laws, pp. 72-3. 



3 Rep. Select Committee on Agriathwal Distress (1836), viii, Pt. i, pp. 115 ef seq. 



•• He attributed this to the contraction of the currency; "that is the mam cause; 

 Irish produce is another cause; want of protection against foreign corn is another; but 

 I should say that the contraction of the currency is the main cause". {Ibid. p. 121.) 



5 For this, and the remaining quotations in the paragraph, see Rep. S.C. Agricultural 

 Distress (1837), v, 129. 



^ For the quotations that follow, see S.Jonas, "On the Farming of Cambridgeshire ", 

 Jour. Roy. Agric. Soc. (1847), p. 35. 



