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Home Extracts, 
Royal Agricultural Society of England. 
The following account of the origin of the Society, from the 
Norfolk News of last year, compiled by Cuthbert W. Johnson, 
Esq., will be interesting to the agriculturists of the districts in 
which the meeting of the Society has just been held. 
For many years after the dissolution of the Board of Agriculture, 
there was not to be found in this country any national society which, 
in its objects and power, could be compared to the great and suc- 
cessful Highland Society of Scotland. The first person who steadily 
and successfully exerted himself to form such a society, was Mr. 
William Shaw, of London — a gentleman to whom, in this as in 
many other great efforts, agriculture is deeply indebted. On many 
occasions, during 1834 and the succeeding years, in more than one 
agricultural periodical, he suggested and advocated the establish- 
ment of a national institution for the advancement of practical agri- 
culture, and of practical agriculture only. He had also, to accom- 
plish this object, several personal communications with the late 
Lord Spencer, the Duke of Richmond, Mr. Handley, and other 
great leading agriculturists ; and, in consequence of these efforts, 
at the dinner of the Smithfield Club, on the 11th of December, 1837, 
Lord Spencer, in his address to the members of the Club, sug- 
gested the establishment of such a society — a suggestion which 
was warmly received by the meeting, and was immediately re- 
sponded to by the Duke of Richmond, Mr. Handley, Mr. E. W. 
Wilmot, and, in fact, by the whole party. 
Lord Spencer remarked (alluding to the Smithfield Club), “ Our 
society in the metropolis is totally useless for the promotion of the 
general purposes of agriculture ; but if a society were established 
for agricultural purposes exclusively, I hesitate not to say that it 
would be productive of the most essential benefits to the English 
farmer. There is one point, however, which I must impress upon 
you, in reference to the formation of a society such as I have men- 
tioned, namely, that there can be no prospect of our obtaining any 
useful results, unless politics, and the discussion of all matters which 
might become subjects of legislative enactment, are scrupulously 
avoided at its meetings.” The Duke of Richmond, at the same 
meeting, expressed as his opinion that “ such an institution would 
promote agriculture, and confer great and inestimable advantages 
