( 273 ) 



XXV. — On the Drainage of Land. By J. French Burke. 



Of all those improvements which the increase of wealth and popu- 

 lation has occasioned to the agriculture of the country, none was, 

 until within these few years, in so backward a state as that of 

 drainage. Notwithstanding the improved fertility of those soils 

 on which, in some few instances, it had been carefully tried, the 

 owners and occupiers of the land seemed generally insensible to 

 its value ; and there was among them an unaccountable degree of 

 apathy to its adoption, caused probably both by want of due in- 

 formation regarding the best modes of carrying it into effect^ as 

 w^ell as by disinclination to incur the expense. 



Our farming ancestors, although constituting an estimable race 

 of sturdy yeomanry^ were, indeed, mostly ignorant men, working 

 upon small holdings, and with such slender capital as seldom to 

 inspire any thought of obtaining from them more than a decent 

 subsistence. Rents were paid chiefly in kind from the produce 

 of the ground and personal service ; the population was scanty ; 

 the product of the soil comparatively trifling ; and large portions 

 of the kingdom were either under forest or in a state of unpro- 

 ductive waste. It may, therefore, be naturally supposed that 

 little value was set upon land apparently so worthless ; and it was 

 not until long after the abolition of the feudal system that any 

 attention was paid to its improvement. Even then, although 

 farmers might endeavour to carry off the waste water from the 

 surface of their land, by cutting a few furrows across a field to 

 communicate with the ditch by which it was bounded, yet such 

 an operation as that of the present manner of under-drainagCj for 

 the purpose of laying the land permanently dry, was hardly known 

 to them ; for although remains have been found of some very 

 ancient land- drains, they were only made either on the demesne 

 of some wealthy baron, or, not improbably, on estates belonging 

 to the monks, who were then the only enlightened husbandmen 

 in the kingdom. The drainage of the fens in Lincolnshire and 

 Cambridge, although a public measure of national importance 

 proposed in the reign of James I., was not actually commenced 

 until the time of the Protectorate, when it was undertaken by 

 foreigners; and the present state of the Bedford Level is mainly 

 due to the exertions of Colonel Vermuyden, a Dutchman in the 

 service of Oliver Cromwell, who was himself a farmer, and a 

 warm friend to agriculture.* His countenance, added to the 

 political circumstances of the times, then induced many persons 



* There is existing, however, the record of an ineffectual attempt made 

 by a company of Flemings so long ago as in the reign of Henry VII., re- 

 ferring, as it is supposed, to the same object. 



VOL. II. X 



