556 
Agricultural Statistics. 
It may be noticed, that when any subject of suddenly enlarged 
and recognized importance has taken possession of the public 
mind, there is generally a certain class of persons of the Nil 
admirari school ready to pour oil upon the excited waters, by 
the assurance that there is nothing whatever new in the question ; 
that it is as old as the subsoil of a Warwickshire ridge, and is 
merely turned up again to daylight after a century or two of 
darkness and repose. Drainage, we have now frequently to hear, 
is as old as the Romans ; the most improved system of irrigation, 
merely an approach to the Saracenic model still traceable by its 
vestiges in Spain, or to examples to be found at still remoter 
depths of antiquity in Egypt or in Peru. And it cannot be 
denied that re-actionists of this class may find some countenance 
for their universal theory by a little exploration into some of the 
oldest existing statutes of this realm. So far indeed, from state- 
inquiry into the produce of the harvest, with the view of ascertain- 
ing the probable range of prices for the year, being a thing 
unprecedented or newfangled, it is rather to be feared that the 
early instances which might be quoted of inquiry and enact- 
ment connected with the sale of corn (of which the " Judicium 
Pillorie," a statute of the thirteenth century, is one of the most 
ancient *) laid the foundation of the very causes (strange as the 
paradox may seem) that have eventually denied to husbandry 
that conscious stature and development, which its world-wide 
reputation should long ago have made it feel and act upon in this 
country, in the manner exemplified by many later-grown branches 
of national industry, from which statistics have sprung with 
spontaneous growth. If our agriculture be found backward and 
uninformed in this department — one so fundamental for all self- 
knowledge, so imperative for all trade security and steadiness of 
dealing, it surely is not that the clouds of state-neglect have 
hung on it, but rather that it has been " too much i' the sun," 
in that regard. That some part of the answer to the question, 
Why are we without statistics ? is to be found in this very cir- 
cumstance, will suggest itself to the careful reader of our early 
agricultural history as recorded in the Statute-book. That rule, 
of daily proof throughout the whole economy of animal and 
vegetable nature, that where you interpose a meddling hand you 
arrest spontaneous action, is not less true of the more compound 
but still nature-governed machinery, in which the phenomena of 
Exchange succeed those of Production. 
It is not quite ten years ago since a circumstance occurred in 
the corn trade of this country calculated to awaken even the most 
unobservant to this question. No Mark Lane prophet had fore- 
* See Morton's Cyclopedia, Art. " Legislation." 
