170 
The Right Hon. Sir Harry Verney, Bart. 
Lord Portman, Lord Eversley, and Sir Harry Verney were all 
present at this Committee meeting, and it is doubtless on this 
account that they were able to claim precedence of the other 
founders and well-wishers of the Society whose names appear in the 
original list of Members published in the Farmers' Magazine of June, 
1838. Some of these have only lately been lost to us (such as the 
Duke of Devonshire, Lord Winmarleigh, and the Earl of Lovelace), 
and two others still happily survive — Earl Grey, K.G., 1 and Lord 
C. J. F. Russell. 
The deaths of Lord Portman and Lord Eversley in 1888 left Sir 
Harry Verney the only survivor of those who attended the inaugural 
meeting, and then gave in their adhesion to the Society. Sir Harry 
was particularly gratified at the reference made to him by H.R.H. 
the Prince of Wales, at the Council Meeting held on February 
6, 1889, as the “ Father” of the Society, which was reported in the 
newspapers of the time ; and on the fifteenth of that month he 
wrote me the following interesting letter : — 
Claydon House, Winslow, Bucks : February 15, 1889. 
Dear Sir, — I have read that at the Monthly Council of the Royal Agri- 
cultural Society, the President, H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, did me the 
honour of mentioning my name as the oldest member of the Society. 
I am not only the oldest Member ; I took the utmost interest in the 
formation of the Society, and I urged its great value and importance on all 
agricultural friends and acquaintances. I could not afford the 50/. that 
those gave as donation, but I have, from that day to this, done all in my 
power to forward the objects of the Society. 
All we landowners have suffered from the lowness of agricultural pro- 
duce ; but I am happy to know that the condition of the labourer — I speak 
of my own neighbourhood — is greatly improved. One very cold November 
evening I was riding home from Aylesbury, through the village of Waddes- 
don, and there at the entrance to the village were 20 men standing idle, 
leaning on their picks, each man by a heap of broken stones. I rode up 
and said, “ My good fellows, why don’t you work, if only to keep yourselves 
warm P ” “ We’re not allowed, sir ; we are only allowed to break this heap 
of stones.” “ And what are you paid for each heap P ” “ Sixpence.” And 
there were 20 more at the Bicester end of Waddesdon. This was before 
1834, the new Poor Law. 
All the work of the Royal Agricultural Society has been so directed as 
to render impossible such a state of things, wherever prominent Members of 
the Society have been at work. 
Am I presumptuous in saying that there is still something to be done ? 
England may be made more healthy, more productive. Pardon an ego- 
tistical instance. When I came to live here ague was very common : we 
have had no case for many years. . . . 
I read in The Times the account of the meeting of the London Housing 
1 Earl Grey, who now becomes the “ Father ” of the Society, is Sir Harry 
Vemey’s junior by one year, having been born in December, 1802. Lord Grey 
is now the only survivor of the Parliaments before the Great Reform Bill, he 
having been returned, as Viscount Howick, for Winchelsea in 1826. At the 
date of Sir Harry Verney’s death he shared with Mr. Gladstone and Lord 
Charles Russell — the latter also one of the founders of the Society — the dis- 
tinction of having been first sent to Parliament in 1832. 
W 2 
