1839 - 1845 -] 
AGRARIAN RIOTS. 
151 
promoting the welfare of the world around him charac¬ 
terised his entire life.” 
So far back as 1818 the subject of agriculture had 
occupied his attention. And, apart from the natural 
affinity between agriculture and geology, there were 
special circumstances in the condition of the time which 
appealed strongly to so ardent a philanthropist. The fall 
of prices after the Peace of 1815 produced wide-spread 
ruin, and, for the moment, the distress was aggravated by 
the displacement of labour which was temporarily effected 
by the introduction of machinery into agricultural opera¬ 
tions. Riots of agrarian origin were not infrequent; 
machine-breaking, rick-burning, and the destruction of the 
shops of butchers and bakers, testified to the almost uni¬ 
versal distress and discontent in country districts. Buck- 
land’s letters illustrate the disturbances, which became, 
from 1815 to 1845, a common feature in English rural life. 
Thus, in November 1830, he writes to Murchison a letter 
from which the following passage is extracted :— 
“ If it be a very hard-run thing, I shall feel it my duty 
to come up to town, and vote for Herschel as President 
of the Royal Society; but I shall be very sorry to leave 
home on Monday next without a most urgent necessity, 
for my wife’s father and mother, six miles from here, are in 
following letter written by him in 1834 to the learned Professor, then 
quite a youth: “I was much gratified at seeing that the Editor 
of the Literary Gazette took the same view which I have done of your 
interesting account of the British Tombs. I am happy to have been 
instrumental in bringing before the public a name to which I look 
forward as likely to figure in the annals of British Science. I trust 
you will not fail to receive in your native town that encouragement 
which strangers, as far as their means extend, are ready to proffer you.” 
