Fifty Years' Progress of British Agriculture. 
85 
addition to those within the power of individual landlords and 
farmers, have to a considerable extent been accorded by the 
Legislature. The Settled Land Act and the Agricultural 
Holdings Acts in Great Britain, with the Land Acts in Ireland, 
mark a great advance in land legislation. But one of the most 
important, that of cheapening and facilitatiug the transfer of 
land, has still to be undertaken. 
Much of the increase of capital value of the land, up to 
1874-76, has since that time been lost, first by a series of bad 
years unprecedented in their continuance, causing not ouly dimi- 
nished crops, but also heavy loss in the live stock through the 
wet and unhealthy character of the seasons. The subsequent 
collapse of prices, which took place in 1885, falling as it did 
upon an agricultural class already impoverished, has greatly 
disheartened both landloixls and tenants, and has seriously 
crippled their power to give employment to their labourers. 
Its effects are at the same time felt among the tradesmen in the 
country villages and towns, whose business is dependent on the 
spending power of the country squires and farmers. It is a 
remarkable fact, illustrative of the change of the agricultural 
system, naturally brought about under the influence of foreign 
competition, that the home production and value of wheat in 
England and Wales at the end of fifty years of the existence of 
the Society, which, at the commencement, was estimated bv 
Mr. Pusey at 13,500,000 quarters, worth 31,000,000?., will not, 
in 1890, exceed one-half of that quantity, and be worth not 
much more than one-third of it in value. This clearly explains 
the great fall in the rent of the wheat lands in this country, 
especially those of the heavier class in the counties on its 
eastern side. 
These islands are, indeed, becoming every ten years less 
agricultural and more pastoral. In the last twenty years three 
million acres, nearly one-seventh of the land under rotation, 
have been added to the permanent pasture. This change is 
likely to go on, as only the better class of lands can compete 
successfully with the products of rich and unexhausted soils now 
brought so cheaply to our shores. We have still an advantage 
over these in the cost of transport, which is nearly equal to the 
rent here. And, to that extent, British agriculture on the good 
land should be able to hold its own. But the poor clay 
soils, which are expensive to cultivate and small in yield, 
and the poorer soils of every kind will be gradually laid to 
grass, or be planted for timber. The climate is admirably 
adapted for grazing. If our manufactures and mines continue 
to maintain a successful competition with other countries, and 
