Charles, Second Viscount Toucnshend. 
O 
His own Norfolk property was then covered with rush- 
grown marshes, or sandy wastes, where a few sheep starved, 
and where “ two rabbits fought for every blade of grass.” 
Six hundred thousand acres of the neighbouring county of 
Lincoln were either fens, or unfenced, unproductive heaths. 
His enlightened and far-reaching improvements converted both 
counties from furze-capped rabbit-warrens into corn manufac- 
tories and sheep and cattle markets. 
Lord Townshend was one of the first great landlords who 
studied the best means of improving their estates. He rein- 
troduced the ancient, but almost obsolete, practice of marling 
the light lands of Norfolk. He encouraged the increase of 
enclosure. He tapped a new source of agricultural wealth by 
the experiments which he adopted in the field cultivation of 
clover and turnips. Following in the lines laid down by Jethro 
Tull, he pursued that eminent agriculturist’s system of drilling 
and horse-hoeing turnips, instead of sowing them bi’oadcast. 
He initiated the Norfolk, or four-course, system of cropping, in 
which roots, grasses, and cereals were judiciously alternated. 
His land was unexhausted by excessive cropping ; it was 
enabled to carry more stock ; he had more manure at com- 
mand; and the sandy soil of the county, at once refreshed, 
fertilised, and consolidated, yielded treble its former crops. 
He was described by a political opponent as a man of im- 
practicably violent temper, impatient of contradiction, captious, 
obstinate, implacable. But even Lord Hervey does not impugn 
Townshend’s honesty. He was one of the few incorruptible 
statesmen of his day. In a time of general licence, he was a 
good husband and a good father. There is a ring of honest 
passion in his answer to Walpole’s insinuations against his 
moral character — “ No, Sir, I am not one of these fine gentle- 
men who find no time of life, nor any station in the world, pre- 
servatives against follies and immoralities that are hardly 
excusable when youth and idleness make us most liable to temp- 
tations.” As Lord Cathcart observes in his biography of Jethro 
Tull, in the last volume of this Journal, “ In an age of corruption, 
Townshend passed his public life in handling political pitch, yet 
finally retired into private life, with hands clean and undefiled.” 
II. E. Frotiiero. 
