34 
"Fifty Years' Progress of British Agriculture, 
ing their circle around the seats of increasing populations. 
These are the articles which can least bear distant transport, 
and are therefore likely longest to withstand the influence of 
foreign competition. The refusal to admit live cattle or sheep 
from any foreign country where cattle disease is known to exist 
has proved of the utmost value as a sanitary precaution. As 
the result of lower prices, the poor clay soils, which are expen- 
sive to cultivate and meagre in yield, will be gradually all laid 
to grass, or be planted, and the poorer soils of every kind, upon 
which the costs of cultivation bear a high proportion to the 
produce, will follow the same rule of necessity. During the 
last twelve years the permanent pasture in this country has 
from this cause been increased by more than two million acres, 
upwards of 10 per cent. 
The consumption of food in this country has increased not 
only in proportion to the increase in the numbers of the people, 
but also with the hitherto augmenting scale of wages. Fifty 
years ago the agricultural labourers rarely could afford to eat 
animal food more than once a week. Of late years some have 
had it every day. and, as the condition of the rest of the people 
has improved in a greater degree, the increased consumption 
of food in this country has been prodigious. In addition to the 
whole of our home produce, we are importing this year pro- 
bably 140,000,000/. worth of foreign food. If this goes on at 
the same progressive rate for the next twenty years, we may 
look forward with confidence to adequate supplies, at moderate 
prices, from the fertile soils of the Queen's colonial possessions 
in Australia, India, and North America, besides what may 
come from foreign countries. 
British agriculture is now undergoing the most severe trial 
to which it has yet been exposed. In 1851, when concluding 
the inquiry made by me in that and the previous years into the 
state of agriculture in the English counties, I referred to edu- 
cation in its widest sense as the most powerful aid in its further 
progress. Knowledge — of their business and true interest by 
the landlord and the tenant, and of the best mode of promoting 
his own welfare by the labourer — was then the first requisite 
towards an improvement of their condition. The tide of pro- 
sperity had begun by the recent gold discoveries of California 
and Australia, and it continued to flow for the next twenty-five 
years. During that period, from the greater prosperity of the 
people and the increased consumption of agricultural produce; 
the capital value of the land and of the live stock and crops 
upon it was increased by four hundred and forty-five millions 
sterling. The measures of a public character, required in 
