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oats. It was then asked how many bushels of wheat could be bought at cost price by one of these equal portions, how many of barley by the second, how many of oats by the third. Each £100 of tithe was divided into three equal sums of £33 6s. 8d.; the septennial averages for the three grains were respectively 7s. Old. for a bushel of wheat; 3s. 11d. for a bushel of barley; 2s. 9d. for a bushel of oats. In 1836 at those prices £33 6s. 8d. bought 94.96 bushels of wheat, or 168-42 bushels of barley, or 242-42 bushels of oats. These have been the fixed multipliers in use ever since. Each year the average prices for the last seven years are multiplied by these fixed quantities, and the result is the tithe rent charge for the coming year. It will be noticed that the charge is affected most by variations in the price of oats, and least by those of wheat.

One other point requires to be mentioned. Lord Althorp in 1833, Sir Robert Peel in 1835, Lord John Russell in 1836 were agreed that the payment should be transferred from occupiers to owners of land. Section 80 of the Act of 1836 empowered tenants to deduct the rentcharge from the rent payable to the landlord. But the section was permissive only. For mutual convenience tenants paid the rent charge direct to the tithe-owner, and their other rent to the landlord was calculated on this basis. By the Tithe Rent Charge Recovery Act of 1891 the tenant was no longer permitted to be the conduitpipe for the payment. The liability to pay the tithe rent charge was transferred to the landowner; the tithe-owner's remedy of distress was altered into a process through the county court; and, instead of the corn averages absolutely determining the amount of tithe rent charges, provision was made in certain cases for a reduced payment when the charge exceeded a certain proportion of the annual value of the land.

CHAPTER XVII.

HIGH FARMING. 1837-1874.

Condition of agriculture in 1837; current explanation of the distress; preparation for a new start in farming; legislative changes; development of a railway system; live-stock in 1837; the general level of farming; foundation of the Royal Agricultural Society; notable improvements, 1837-74; extension of drainage; purchase of feeding stuffs; discovery of artificial fertilisers; mechanical improvements and inventions; Repeal of the Corn Laws; the golden age from 1853 to the end of 1862; rapid progress in the "Fifties"; pedigree mania in stock-breeding.

THE reign of Queen Victoria began in the midst of a transition stage from one state of social and industrial development to another. A complete change of agricultural front was taking place, which necessitated some displacement of the classes that had previously occupied or cultivated the soil. The last ten years of the present century have raised the question whether agriculturists are not now passing through another transition stage which, like its predecessor, may effect another agricultural revolution and result in another disruption of rural society.

Roughly speaking, the first thirty-seven years of the new reign formed an era of advancing prosperity and progress, of rising rents and profits, of the rapid multiplication of fertilising agencies, of an expanding area of corn cultivation, of more numerous, better bred, better fed, better housed stock, of varied improvements in every kind of implement and machinery, of growing expenditure on the making of the land by drainage, the construction of roads, the erection of farm buildings, and the division into fields of convenient size. So far as the standard of the highest farming is concerned, agriculture has made but little advance since the "Fifties." The last twenty-six years of the reign, on the other hand, were a period of agricultural adversity-of falling rents, dwindling profits, con

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tracting areas of arable cultivation, diminishing stock, decreasing expenditure on land improvement.

In 1837 the farming industry had passed through a quarter of a century of misfortunes, aggravated by a disordered currency, bank failures, adverse seasons, labour difficulties, agrarian discontent. During times of adversity it has always been the practice to charge landowners, farmers, and even labourers with extravagance, to trace distress to their increased luxury, to attribute their domestic difficulties to their less simple habits. The explanation is as old as the hills. Arthur Young, writing in 1773 On the Present State of Waste Lands, remarks that the landed gentry were beggared by their efforts to rival their wealthier neighbours who had amassed fortunes in trade. The rural frog burst in his efforts to equal the proportions of the civic ox. The antient prospect which afforded pleasure to twenty generations is poisoned by the pagodas and temples of some rival neighbour; some oilman who builds on the solid foundation of pickles and herrings. At church the liveries of a tobacconist carry all the admiration of the village; and how can the daughter of the antient but decayed gentleman stand the competition at an assembly with the point, diamonds and tissues of a haberdasher's nieces?" Their tenants did not escape from similar charges. In 1573 Tusser had alluded to farmers with "hawk on hand " who neglected their business for sport; in the nineteenth century it was said to be the hunting-field or the racecourse which attracted them from the farm or the market. In 1649 Walter Blith had attributed the rural depression of that day to the "high stomachs" of the farmers. So in 1816 the wiseacres of the London clubs vehemently contended that farmers had only to return from claret to beer, and their wives from the piano to the hen-house, and agricultural distress would be at an end. It was reserved for an imaginative versifier in 1801 to charge them with soaking fivepound notes instead of rusks in their port wine. Somewhat similar in tone was the outcry against labourers. "We hear," writes Borlase, the Cornish antiquary, in 1771, "every day of murmurs of the common people; of want of employ; of short wages; of dear provisions. There may be some reason for this; our taxes are heavy upon the necessaries of life; but the chief reason is the extravagance of the vulgar in the unnecessaries of life." Among the tinworkers in his parish were three-score snuff-boxes at one time; of fifty girls above fifteen years old, forty-nine had scarlet cloaks. "There is

scarce a family in the parish, I mean of common labourers, but have tea, once if not twice a day. . . . In short, all labourers live above their conditions."

The same explanations with regard to all classes of agriculturists were repeated in 1837, and have been periodically offered ever since. The diagnosis of disease would not be so popular if it were not easy and to some extent true. It is, to say the least, inadequate. When the standard of living rises for all classes, agriculturists are not the only men who spend money more lavishly than the prudence which criticises after the event can justify. But the true explanation of the distress lay in the conditions already described. The old instrument of farming had failed; the new had not been perfected. An agricultural revolution was in progress, which was none the less complete in its operation because it was peaceful in its processes.

In 1837 agriculture was languishing; farming had retrograded ; heavy clay-lands were either abandoned or foul, and in a miserable state of cultivation. Indifferent pasture, when first ploughed, had produced good corn crops from the accumulated mass of elements of fertility which they had stored. But this savings bank of wealth had been soon exhausted. At peace-prices half crops ceased to be remunerative, and the newly ploughed arable area was now recovering itself from exhaustion to grass as best it could without assistance. Lighter soils had suffered comparatively little; turnips, and the Norfolk system had helped the eastern counties to bear the stress of the storm, yet, even there, farmers had “had to put down their chaises and their nags." Much of the progress made between 1790 and 1812 had been lost. Nor was this the worst feature. The distrust which prevailed between farmers and their men had extended to tenants and their landlords. Men who had contracted to pay war rents from peace profits were shy of leases. For at least a generation confidence was shaken between landlord and tenant.

The brighter side to the picture was that, in the midst of much suffering, the ground had been prepared for new conditions. Small yeomen, openfield farmers, and commoners could never have fed a manufacturing population. They could not have initiated and would not have adopted agricultural improvements, of which some were still experimental, and of which all required an initial expenditure. It was from these classes that the most bigoted opponents of “ Practice with Science" were recruited, and their contempt was heartily sincere for the innovations of the apron-string "farmer. Socially

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valuable though they were, they were becoming commercially discredited. Their disappearance was a social loss; but it had become an economic necessity. The land could no longer be cultivated for the needs of a scanty, scattered population, occupied in the tillage of the soil, or engaged in one-man handicrafts. So long as England depended for food on her own produce,-a condition which lasted a quarter of a century after the repeal of the Corn Laws,-it was requisite that farming should be transformed from a self-sufficing domestic industry into a profit-earning manufactory of bread, beef, and mutton. Food, upon the scale that changed conditions demanded, could only be produced upon land which had been prepared for the purpose by the outlay of capitalist landlords and the intelligent enterprise of large tenant-farmers.

In other respects, also, the distress of 1813-37 produced good results. So long as war prices prevailed, prosperous years had brought wealth to slovens, and sluggards had amassed riches in their sleep. The collapse of prosperity spurred the energies and enterprise of both landlords and tenants, who could only hold their own by economising the cost and increasing the amount of production. Within certain limits, low prices and keen competition compelled improvement. Again, though the attraction of war-prices had driven the plough through much valuable pasture, it had also supplied the incentive which added hundreds of thousands of acres of wastes to the cultivated area of the country. Finally, during the era of Protection, landlords and farmers had learned to rely too entirely upon Parliamentary help in their difficulties. They had been prone to expect that alterations in the protective duties would turn the balance between the success and failure of their harvests. Now, disappointment after disappointment had taught them the useful lesson that they could expect no immediate assistance from legislative interference, and that, if they wanted aid, they must help themselves.

Meanwhile legislation had been active in many useful directions. The agricultural revolution, and the effects alike of war and peace, had completely disorganised the labour market. Parliament cooperated with industrial changes in redressing the balance between demand and supply and in adapting the relations of capital and labour to new conditions. For agricultural labourers the Poor-Law of 1834 did what the Factory legislation of 1833 had done for artisans. The change produced immediate effect. The number of paupers