112 
Proceedings of the Eoyal Soeiety 
individualism, and when the leaders of men, spurning the dead level 
of uniform stolidity, became the pioneers for their fellow-men. No 
progress — no attempt at progress— is discernible during the dim, ages 
when the land owned no separate title ; it was only when what for 
lack of a better word I must call selfishness contributed its ferment 
to the inert mass of humanity that the individual sporades developed 
that activity which we call progress, and of which the product is 
civilisation. 
The second observation flows out of the first : the cultivation of the 
soil, though the oldest of the arts, is still an art itself of which the 
basis is experience and the spirit is experiment. Even with our- 
selves those who are the most proficient in the art desire to free our 
agriculture from the trammels which seem to them to repress and 
restrain its still nascent capacity ; the freedom of culture desired by 
many is justified on the ground that successful experiment may 
reveal fresh methods and more adequate modes of culture. But 
under any conceivable modification of the Saxon tenure progress 
was impossible, because experiment was impossible and change 
impracticable. The same uniform rule of culture had to he followed 
in even the separate tillage lots because all were interested in the con|- 
mon cultivation ; every one had to sow the same crop and to cultivate 
it in the same way, and the fields had to be cleared for the common 
pasture on the same day; much of the sluggishness of English agricul- 
ture may be distinctly traced to the surviving influences of that Saxon 
tenure which imposed those fetters of iron custom on the cultivation 
of the soil from which hardly yet have English agriculturalists 
emancipated themselves. In Scotland the Board of Agriculture in 
1798 say: — “In former times there were several commons in which 
the cattle belonging to different proprietors went promiscuously 
under one herd or keeper. The arable land also was possessed in 
alternate ridges, separated by broad balks, on which the large stones 
were when the indolent husbandman could take that trouble, and 
was pastured by the cattle after being freed from the crops. Lands 
thus awkwardly possessed and wretchedly managed, might not im- 
properly be called wastes ; and though Acts of Parliament passed as 
early as 1695, for dividing at the instance of any proprietor having 
interest, yet no advantage was taken of such beneficial laws till the 
1738 or 1739, when the lands were parcelled out among the several 
proprietors in proportion to the valuation or rate by which they 
