92 
Farming of Yorkshire. 
writer, in a time of tlio greatest depression : " Tliat the hereditary 
owners of land woukl, by the continued exertion of that energy 
and prudence which carried those from whom they inherit their 
possessions througli all changes, continue to maintain their social 
position." — Gishorncs Essaij on Ar/ricultiu-c, p. 255. 
The list of non-improving landlords is happily but small in 
this county ; but as long as any remain these observations would 
be incomplete were they not briefly brought under notice. On the 
estates of such owners are found the ancient hedgerows existing in 
wild luxuriance ; ponds, often occupying large spaces, sometimes in 
small enclosures of not more than six or seven acres ; headlands 
unploughed ; roads and drainage neglected, or, if attempted, done 
very inefficiently ; farm-buildings small and ill-contrived, and 
the farmhouse, if one story high, with a sledge or pitch-roof, small 
and incommodious ; the tenantry low-rented, but poor and spirit- 
less, exhausting still more the already impoverished soil, neither 
benefiting themselves nor the community at large. Such a 
picture is neither imaginary nor overdrawn : we could mention 
several large estates to which it accurately applies. 
We cannot read the early reports on agriculture without finding 
everywhere complaints of the difficulties thrown in the way of 
improvement. Strickland says justly of fiscal fetters that they 
are the bane of agricultural improvement ; high prices were not 
sufficient to encourage farmers, for the taxes were proportionately 
increased, and with little prospect of relief: we may therefore 
date the greatest progress from the recent period when these 
burdens were in part removed. Charnock justly observes, in his 
Essay on the West Riding (^Journal, vol. ix. p. 304) : — " It was not 
until all this had passed (the late war) that men looked to find 
what improvements were needed at their own doors ; and true as 
this was of all classes in general, it was, I believe, more especially 
so with respect to the cultivation of the soil. The high price of 
produce at that time was practically no incentive to agricultural 
improvement, nor was it until year after year prices gradually 
readjusted themselves to peace rates, that the agricultural interest 
as a bod^ became sensible that continued profits from the land 
were to be obtained by the additional produce of an improved 
and more economical cultivation, at a lower scale of prices." 
The aim of the landlord should be to maintain his estate in an 
" improving condition ;" that is to say, the deposit of fertilising 
elements in the soil should always be in excess of the aggregate of 
those abstracted in the marketable produce. The warning voice 
of Liebig urgently called our attention to the maintenance of this 
progressive fertility. No county offers so many advantages as 
Yorkshire for a sufficient and permanent supply of solid manure, 
and nowhere can the efficacy and economy of sewage manure be 
