ENGLISH AGRICULTURE.*
Ma. CIIRTLER'S review of the history of agriculture takes in a period of nearly fifteen centuries. It begins with the arrival of the English, who took over, he thinks, the com- munistic system of the population which they drove out or enslaved. With the Normans came the manor system, not wholly dispossessing the earlier order, but practically dominant throughout England. This reached its culminating point of prosperity in the thirteenth century. Then came a period of decline, with which the long French war, with its incessant demands on a scanty population and narrow resources, had much to do, while natural causes, the Black Death chief among them, worked still more effectively. All this, as we find it set forth here, with many illustrations from details of cultivation, prices, budgets of income and expendi- ture of landlords, tenants, and labourers, is highly interesting. But we must limit ourselves to a survey of recent times, a period beginning with the Napoleonic War, and thus including something more than a century.
This period began with great apparent prosperity, a long run of high prices in which the very lowest figures were such as a farmer nowadays scarcely dreams of realising. In March, 1801, wheat was 156s. the quarter ; when it sank at the end of 1804 to 49s. 6d. the farmers thought that they were ruined. The average price, how- ever, was not less than 80s., more than double what is quoted in the markets of to-day, and nearly three times what it has often been in the last decade. Of course there was a per contra in heavy taxation, and complaints of the times were not wanting. But the great mass of the farmers pocketed large profits in silence. The change in their style of living betrayed the truth. "They insisted on being called esquire," writes an observer in 1817, "and kept liveried servants." One class of the agricultural community, however, suffered continuously. This was the labourer. His wages varied from ls. a day in South-Western England to ls. 8d. in the North. With bacon at 10d. per pound and wheat at lls. the bushel—it might be put higher—he could not make both ends meet, and the deficit had to be supplied out of the rates, a system which suited the farmer, who thus purchased something like a proprietary right in the men whom he helped to feed. The enclosures which were busily proceeding during the first two decades of the nineteenth century aggravated the hardships of the rural poor. Whoever gained, they certainly lost. There was an increase in the • A Short History of English. Agriculture. By W. H. R. Curlier. Oxford : at the, Clarendon Press. [6s. 6d. net.] value of the land, and better methods of cultivation, now rendered possible by the breaking up of tyrannical customs. added to the wealth of the country, but the immediate profits went to officials and lawyers. An Act cost from £1,000 to £1,500. The enclosing of three farms, with an aggregate acreage of five hundred and seventy acres, cost £4,000, which, if we deduct £200 for compensation to the tenant, gives between £6 and £7 per acre. It would not be rash to conjecture that the fee simple of the land is not worth to-day much more than half as much again. The days of prosperity came to an end shortly after the peace of 1815. There had been huge speculations, exaggerated by the apparent ease with which, the check of cash payments having been removed, great financial operations could be conducted. Twenty years of distress (1815-1835) followed. Of course we must discount the complaints of loss and sufferings. The farmer had enjoyed a prosperity such as had never before fallen to the lot of his class, and be resented the change to conditions which his successors of to-day would consider tolerable, or even more. Still, there was trouble. Then things began to mend. The vicious old Poor Law was done away with, and tithes were commuted, to the great gain of the farmer, both in the amount paid and in the manner of payment. It seems incredible that in a bad harvest- time he could not gather in his crops till the tithe-owner had satisfied himself that he should get his due. Improved methods of cultivation were introduced, especially in the direction of drainage, machinery, and manure. (Sir Humphry Davy had analysed guano in 1805, but it did not come into use before the "thirties.") For about a generation, beginning with the accession of Queen Victoria, agriculture prospered. The duty on foreign wheat was finally removed in 1849. a, shilling registration charge being retained. But the effects were not fully felt for some years. During the two decades 1857-1876 (we purposely omit the Crimean period) wheat averaged 53s. 8d. per quarter, barley 36s. 9d., and oats 24s. 7d. The aggregate of these figures is 115a., as against the 109s. 10d. fixed by the Tithe Commutation Act of 1836. But the average of the two decades ending with 1907 shows 31s. 2d., 25s. ld., and 16s. 8d., or a total of 72s. 11d. —This is just the same as if the lawyer got a little more than four shillings for his six and eightpence, the physician thirteen shillings for his guinea, and the trader some twelve per cent. profit instead of twenty, all expenses and outgoings remaining the same.—Some alleviation was gained by laying down arable in grass, but the general result has been a decrease in the value of agricultural property of not less than two hundred million pounds. And on this we are now to have a special tax. It is idle to say that purely agricultural land is to be exempt. Land must be taken as a whole. The result of economic and social change during the last thirty years or so has been to lessen greatly the value of nine-tenths of the land, and to increase, greatly in some cases, the value of the remainder. A school or a College, for instance—it would be easy to give the names—receives less than half of its old income from farms which it owns, but it has the good luck to possess a few acres within the precincts of some great town, and the loss is made up. In this case the justice is obvious ; but the argument holds good of all the possession of land, which is indeed as much an occupation as the pro- fession of the Church, the Bar, and Medicine. The barrister has his hard and his easy work ; so has the physician. A
solicitor is paid by the same percentage when the con- veyance which he arranges is of the most complicated or of the simplest kind. Every business, indeed every employ- ment, has its hard places and its smooth. They are taken together and taxed together. The finance which singles out land for unequal treatment is partisan. We may trace it further back ; it is an application, to which circumstances give a certain popularity, of Proudhon's immortal maxim,— La proprieta c'est le vol.
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