Present and former condition of the country—Progress of cultivation—Evil influence of feudalism—State of agriculture in the sixteenth century—Modern improvements—Prices of wheat—Increased breadth of land under cultivation—Average consumption of wheat—Implements of agriculture now in use—Number of agriculturists in Great Britain.

It is the remark of foreigners, as they travel from the sea-coast to London, that the country is a garden. It has taken nineteen centuries to make it such a garden. The marshes in which the legions of Julius CÆsar had to fight, up to their loins, with the Britons, to whom these swamps were habitual, are now drained. The dense woods in which the Druids worshipped are now cleared. Populous towns and cheerful villages offer themselves on every side. Wherever the eye reaches there is cultivation. Instead of a few scattered families painfully earning a subsistence by the chace, or by tilling the land without the knowledge and the instruments that science has given to the aid of manual labour,—that cultivation is carried on with a systematic routine that improves the fertility of a good season, and diminishes the evils of a bad. Instead of the country being divided amongst hostile tribes, who have little communication, the whole territory is covered with a network of roads, and canals, and navigable rivers, and railroads, through which means there is an universal market, and wherever there is demand there is instant supply. Rightly considered, there is no branch of production which has so largely benefited by the power of knowledge as that of agriculture. It was ages before the great physical changes were accomplished which we now behold on every side; and we are still in a state of progress towards the perfection of those results which an over-ruling Providence had in store for the human race, in the gradual manifestation of those discoveries which have already so changed our condition and the condition of the world.

The history of cultivation in Great Britain is full of instruction as regards the inefficiency of mere traditional practice and the slowness with which scientific improvement establishes its dominion. It is no part of our plan to follow out this history; but a few scattered facts may not be without their value.

The oppressions of tenants that were perpetrated under the feudal system, when ignorant lords of manors impeded production by every species of extortion, may be estimated by one or two circumstances. There can be no doubt that the prosperity of a tenant is the best security for the landlord's due share of the produce of the land. Without manure, in some form or other, the land cannot be fertilized: the landlords knew this, but they required to have a monopoly of the fertility. Their tenants kept a few sheep, but the landlords reserved to themselves the exclusive privilege of having a sheepfold; so that the little tenants could not fold their own sheep on their own lands, but were obliged to let them be folded with those of their lord, or pay a fine.[17] The flour-mill was the exclusive property of the manorial lord, whether lay or ecclesiastical; and whatever the distance, or however bad the road, the tenant could grind nowhere but at the lord's mill. No doubt the rent of land was exceedingly low, and the lord was obliged to maintain himself and his dependents by adding something considerable to his means by many forms of legalized extortion. The rent of land was so low because the produce was inconsiderable, to an extent which will be scarcely comprehended by modern husbandmen. In the law-commentary called 'Fleta,' written about the end of the thirteenth century, the author says the farmer will be a loser unless corn be dear, if he obtains from an acre of wheat only three times the seed sown. He calculated the low produce at six bushels an acre: the average produce was perhaps little higher; we have distinct records of its being no higher a century afterwards. In 1390, at Hawsted, near Bury, the produce of the manor-farm was forty-two quarters of wheat, or three hundred and thirty-six bushels, from fifty-seven acres; and upon an average of three years sixty-one acres produced only seventy quarters, or five hundred and sixty bushels. Sir John Cullum, who collected these details from the records of his own property, says, "no particular dearness of corn followed, so that, probably, those very scanty crops were the usual and ordinary effects of the imperfect husbandry then practised." The husbandry was so imperfect that an unfavourable season for corn-crops, which in our days would have been compensated by a greater production of green crops, was followed by famine. When the ground was too hard, the seed could not be sown for want of the sufficient machine-power of plough and harrow. The chief instrument used was as weak and imperfect as the plough which we see depicted in Egyptian monuments, and which is still found in parts of Syria. The Oriental ploughman was with such an instrument obliged to bend over his plough, and load it with all the weight of his body, to prevent it merely scratching the ground instead of turning it up. His labour was great and his care incessant, as we may judge from the words of our Saviour,—"No man having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God." Latimer, the Protestant martyr, in his 'Sermon of the Plough,' in which he holds that "preaching of the Gospel is one of God's plough-works, and the preacher is one of God's ploughmen," describes the labour upon which he raises his parallel: "For as the ploughman first setteth forth his plough, and then tilleth his land and breaketh it in furrows, and sometimes ridgeth it up again; and at another time harroweth it and clotteth it, and sometimes dungeth it and hedgeth it, diggeth it and weedeth it, purgeth it and maketh it clean,—so the prelate, the preacher, hath many divers offices to do." Latimer was the son of a Liecestershire farmer, and knew practically what he was talking about. He knew that the land would not bear an adequate crop without all this various and often-repeated labour. And yet the labour was so inadequately performed, that a few years after he had preached this famous sermon, we are told by a credible writer of the times of Queen Mary—William Bulleyn, a physician and botanist—that in 1555 "bread was so scant, insomuch that the plain poor people did make very much of acorns." A few years onward a great impulse was given to husbandry through various causes, amongst which the increased abundance of the precious metals through the opening of the mines of South America had no inconsiderable influence. The industrious spirit of England was fairly roused from a long sleep in the days of Queen Elizabeth. Harrison, in his 'Description of Britain,' says, "The soil is even now in these our days grown to be much more fruitful than it hath been in times past." This historian of manners saw the reason. "In times past" there was "idle and negligent occupation;" but when he wrote (1593) "our countrymen are grown to be more painful, skilful, and careful, through recompense of gain." The cultivators had their share of the benefits of cultivation; they had their "recompense of gain." Capital had been spread amongst the class of tenants: they were no longer miserable dependents upon their grasping lords. For a century or so onward the improvements in agriculture were not very decided. The rotation of crops was unknown; and winter food for sheep and cattle not being raised, the greater number were slaughtered and salted at Martinmas. The fleeces were wretchedly small, for the few sheep nibbled the stubbles and commons bare till the spring-time. The carcases of beef were not half their present size. At the beginning of the last century the turnip cultivation was introduced, and in the middle of the century the horse-hoeing husbandry came into use. Our agricultural revolution was fairly begun a hundred years ago; and yet for many years the value of manure was very imperfectly understood, and even up to our own time it has been wasted in every direction. There is given in Sir John Cullum's book an abstract of the lease of a farm in 1753. The tenant was to be allowed two shillings for every load of manure that he brought from Bury, about four miles distant. During twenty-one years the landlord was charged with only one load. At that period all agriculture was in a great degree traditional. There were no agricultural societies—no special journals for this great branch of national industry. Arthur Young applied his shrewd and observing talent to the dissemination of farming knowledge; but the agricultural mind, with very few exceptions, rejected book-knowledge as vain and impertinent. Chemistry applied to the soil was as unknown to the cultivator as the perturbations of the planets. Geology was an affair of conjecture, and had assumed no form of utility. Meteorology entered into no farmer's mode of estimating the comparative value of one site and another. Sir John Cullum made a most curious and instructive estimate of the science of the Suffolk farmers in 1784, when he wrote,—"The farm-houses are in general well furnished with every convenient accommodation. Into many of them a barometer has of late years been introduced—a most useful instrument for the husbandman, and which is mentioned here as a striking instance of the intelligence of this period."

The wars of the French Revolution, and the high prices consequent upon the almost utter absence of foreign supplies, gave a stimulus to agriculture, which principally displayed itself in the effort to bring waste lands into cultivation. From 1790 to 1819, a period of thirty years, there were two thousand one hundred and sixty-nine Inclosure Bills passed by Parliament. In the first ten years of this period the average price of wheat had increased ten shillings above the average of the ten years from 1780 to 1789. In the second ten years it had increased thirty-six shillings above that average. In the third ten years it was very nearly double, being 88s. 8d. from 1810 to 1819, and 45s. 9d. from 1780 to 1789. A portion of these prices, however, must be attributed to a depreciated currency. During that period of thirty years, very few of the great scientific improvements which have cheapened production had been introduced, although better modes of cultivation unquestionably prevailed. During the twenty years from 1820 to 1839 there were only three hundred and thirty-one Inclosure Bills passed; and the price of wheat had fallen to about the average of the ten years from 1790 to 1799, and it continued at that average for another ten years. In the ten years from 1840 to 1849, we cannot gather the amount of land brought into new cultivation from the number of Inclosure Bills, as there was a General Inclosure Act passed in 1835, to prevent the expense of particular bills for small tracts of land. But it has been calculated that, while more than three million acres were brought into cultivation in the twenty years from 1800 to 1819, about one million acres only were inclosed in the thirty years from 1820 to 1849.[18] If we look then, as we shall briefly do, at the wonderfully increased production of Great Britain, we shall be naturally led to the conclusion that some cause, much more efficient than the inclosure of waste lands, has given us the means of feeding a population which has doubled since the beginning of the century. This production is the result of the whole course of improvement effected by science, and stimulated by capital. The Bedford Level was drained by our ancestors. The fens of Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire have been drained effectually in our time. That luxuriant flat now rejoices in waving corn-crops over many a mile. A few years ago it was a land of stagnant ditches; where little wind-mills, that looked to the solitary traveller through that cold district like the toys of children, lifted the water out of the trenches, and left an isolated acre or two of dry earth for man to toil in. Now mighty steam-pumps carry the water into artificial rivers, and the whole region is unrivalled for fertility.

It is estimated by some statists that the average consumption of wheat for each individual of the population is eight bushels. Others estimate that consumption at six bushels. It will be sufficient for a broad view of the increase of production, as compared with the increase of population, to take the consumption at eight bushels, or a quarter of wheat per head. In the ten years from 1801 to 1810, deducting an annual average of 600,000 quarters of foreign wheat and flour imported, the population in 1811 being 11,769,725, the number fed by wheat of home growth was somewhat above eleven millions. In the ten years from 1841 to 1850, deducting an annual average of 3,000,000 quarters of foreign wheat and flour, the population in 1851 being 21,121,967, the number fed by wheat of home growth was somewhat above eighteen millions. The productive power of the country had increased, in the course of fifty years, to the enormous extent of giving subsistence, in one article of agricultural produce alone, to seven millions of people. The population in 1751 was estimated at little more than seven millions. It has trebled in a century; and we may be perfectly sure that the production of the land has far more than trebled in that period. The probability is that it has quadrupled; for there is no doubt that the great bulk of the people are better fed than in 1751, when rye-bread was the common sustenance of the great body of labourers throughout the country.

Let us endeavour to take a rapid view of the implements of agriculture in common use at the present time—implements which have been described as "intended not to bring about new conditions of soil, nor to yield new products of any kind, but to do with more certainty and cheapness what had been done hitherto by employing the rude implements of former centuries." Such are the words of Mr. Pusey's admirable Report on the Agricultural Implements in the 'Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations.' We cannot do better than furnish a few slight notices of the leading subjects of this report.

The plough and the harrow were the sole instruments of tillage at the beginning of this century. Bloomfield, in his 'Farmer's Boy,' describes them:—

The old plough used to be drawn with four horses; and they were needed. It was a cumbrous instrument, "adapted to the clay soils when those soils were the chief source of corn to the country, and had been handed down from father to son, after the heavy lands had been widely laid down to grazing-ground, and the former downs had become our principal arable land." The modern plough is an implement constructed on mathematical principles, which, by its mould-board, "raising each slice of earth (furrow-slice) from its flat position, through an upright one, lays it over half inclined on the preceding slice." The perfect instrument produces the skilled labourer. A good ploughman will set up a pole a quarter of a mile distant, and trace a furrow so true up to that goal that no eye can detect any divergence from absolute straightness. Mr. Pusey justly says that this is a triumph of art.

With an agriculture that permits no waste, much of the picturesque has fled from our fields. Bloomfield describes the repose of the ploughman after he has driven his team to the boundary of his furrow:—

Gone is the green headland; gone the cowslip bank; gone the pendent boughs. The furrow runs up to the extremest point of a vast field without hedges. Gone, too, are the green slips between the lands of common fields. Their very names of "balk" and "feather" are obsolete. These adornments of the landscape are inconsistent with the demands of a population that doubles itself in half a century. The labourer has small rest, and the soil has less. Under the old husbandry, before the culture of the green crops, one-third of the arable land was always idle. Two years of grain-crop, and one year of fallow, was the invariable rule. Look how the land is worked now. The plough and the harrow turn up and pulverize the soil, but they do it much more effectually than of old. The roller is a noble iron instrument, instead of an old pollard. Modern ingenuity has added the clod-crusher. But something was still wanting for the better preparation of land for seed—this is the scarifier or cultivator; which, according to Mr. Pusey, will save one half of the horse-labour employed upon the plough. Into the details of this saving it is no part of our purpose to enter.[19] We give a cut of the implement, covering as much ground in width as 8-1/2 ploughs.

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We proceed to "Instruments used in the Cultivation of Crops." Mr. Pusey tells us that "the sower with his seed-lip has almost vanished from southern England, driven out by a complicated machine, the drill, depositing the seed in rows, and drawn by several horses." We miss the sower; and the next generation may require a commentary upon the many religious and moral images that arose out of his primitive occupation. When James Montgomery says of the seed of knowledge, "broadcast it o'er the land," some may one day ask what "broadcast" means. But the drill does not only sow the seed; it deposits artificial manures for the reception of the seed. The bones that were thrown upon the dunghill are now crushed. The mountains of fertilizing matter that have been accumulated through ages on islands of the Pacific, from the deposits of birds resting in their flight upon rocks of that ocean, and which we call guano, now form a great article of commerce. Superphosphate, prepared from bones, or from the animal remains of geological ages, is another of the precious dusts which the drill economizes. There are even drills for dropping water combined with superphosphate. "Such," says Mr. Pusey, "is the elastic yet accurate pliability with which, in agriculture, mechanism has seconded chemistry." The system of horse-hoeing, which is the great principle of modern husbandry, entirely depends upon the use of the drill. The horse-hoe cannot be worked unless the plants are in rows. Such a hoe as this will clean at once nine rows of wheat, six of beans, and four of turnips. To manage such an instrument requires "a steady and cool hand." The skilled labourer is as essential as the beautiful machine.

Of instruments for gathering the harvest, the most important are reaping-machines. In the United States they are sold to a great extent. Mr. M'Cormick, who completed his invention in 1845, states that the demand reaches to a thousand annually. Mr. Pusey says of this machine that, "in bad districts and late seasons, it may often enable the farmer to save the crop." In Scotland and the north of England Mr. Bell's reaping-machine is coming into extensive use. The Americans have also their mowing-machines, drawn by two horses, which mow, upon an average, six acres of grass per day. The haymaking machines, as labour-saving instruments, are not uncommon in England.

Machines for preparing corn for market are amongst the most important inventions of modern times. Here, indeed, agriculture assumes many of the external features of a manufacture. Steam comes prominently into action. In many large farms there is fixed steam-power; and most efficient it is. But the moveable steam-engine comes to the aid of the small farmer; and in some districts that power is let out to those who want it. By this little engine applied to a thrashing-machine, corn is thrashed at once from the rick, instead of being carried into the barn. Here is a representation of the combined steam-engine and thrashing-machine. The thrashing-machine with horse-power is that generally used in England. Rarely, now, can the beautiful description of Cowper be realized:—

Few now wield that ancient instrument. Nor is the chaff now separated from the corn by the action of the wind, which was called winnowing, but we have the winnowing-machine, by which forty quarters of wheat can be taken from the thrashing-machine and prepared for the market in five hours.

But machinery does not end here. The food of stock is prepared by machines. First, there is the turnip-cutter. Our 'Farmer's Boy' will tell us how his sheep and kine were fed in the winter fifty years ago:—

We are told that "lambs fed with a turnip-cutter would be worth more at the end of a winter by eight shillings a head than lambs fed on whole turnips." The chaff-cutter is an instrument equally valuable.

The last machine which we shall mention is connected with the greatest of all improvements in the crop-producing power of British land—the system of tile-draining. Pipes are now made by machinery; and land may be effectually drained at a cost of 4l. per acre.

The farmers of England have made what we may fairly call heroic efforts to meet foreign competition; but their efforts would have been comparatively vain had science not come to the aid of production.

According to the Census of 1851, the total population of Great Britain is 20,959,477—in round numbers, twenty-one millions. In the 'Return of Occupations,' one-half of this entire population is found under the family designation—such as child at home, child at school, wife, daughter, sister, niece, with no particular occupation attributed to them. They are important members of the state; they are growing into future producers, or they preside over the household comforts, without which there is little systematic industry. But they are not direct producers. Of this half of the entire population, one-fifth belong to the class of cultivators, viz.:—

This total (in which we omit the farmers' wives and daughters, amounting to about 240,000) shows that one-fifth of the working population provide food, with the exception of foreign produce, for themselves and families and the other four-fifths of the population. Such a result could not be accomplished without the appliances of scientific power which we have described in this chapter. In the early steps of British society a very small proportion of labour could be spared for other purposes than the cultivation of the soil. It has been held that a community is considerably advanced when it can spare one man in three from working upon the land. Only twenty-six per cent of our adult males are agricultural—that is, three men labour at some other employment, while one cultivates the land. During the last forty years the proportion of agricultural employment, in comparison with manufacturing and commercial, has been constantly decreasing; and is now about twenty per cent., whereas in 1811 it was thirty-five per cent. of all occupations.

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