A Short History of English Agriculture

by W. H. R. Curtler

Altogether the total number of stock exhibited was 1,858, and the number of implements was 5,430.

In 1840 appeared Liebig's Chemistry in its Application to Agriculture and Physiology, tracing the relations between the nutrition of plants and the composition of the soil, a book which was received with enthusiasm, and completely changed the attitude which agriculturists generally had maintained towards chemistry; one of contempt, founded on ignorance.

But, as Mr. Prothero has said,[621] 'if the new agriculture was born in the laboratory of Glissen, it grew into strength at the experimental station of Rothamsted.' There, for more than half a century, Lawes and Gilbert conducted experiments, of vast benefit to agriculture, in the objects, method, and effect of manuring; the scientific bases for the rotation of crops, and the results of various foods on animals in the production of meat, milk, and manure.

The use of artificial manures now spread rapidly; bones, used long before uncrushed, are said to have been first crushed in 1772, and their value was realized by Coke of Holkham, but for long they were crushed by hammer or horse mill, and their use was consequently limited. Then iron rollers worked by steam ground them cheaply and effectively, and their use soon spread, though it was not till about 1840 that it can be said to have become general. Its effects were often described as wonderful. In Cheshire, cheese-making had exhausted the soil, and it was said that by boning and draining an additional cow could be kept for every 4 acres, and tenants readily paid 7 per cent. to their landlords for expenditure in bone manure. Its use had indeed raised many struggling farmers to comparative independence.[622] A very large quantity of the bones used came from South America.[623] Porter also noticed that 'since 1840 an extensive trade has been carried on in an article called Guano', the guana of Davy, 'from the islands of the Pacific and off the coast of Africa'. Nitrate of soda was just coming in, but was not much used till some years later. In 1840 Liebig suggested the treatment of bones with sulphuric acid, and in 1843 Lawes patented the process and set up his works at Deptford.[624]

Italian rye grass, not to be confounded with the old English ray grass, had been introduced by Thomson of Banchory, in 1834, from Munich;[625] and though the swede was known at the end of the eighteenth century, in many parts it had only just become common. In Notts it was in 1844 described as having recently become 'the sheet-anchor of the farmer'.[626] In Cheshire a writer at the same date said, 'in the year 1814 there were not 5 acres of Swedish turnips grown in the parish where I reside; now there are from 60 to 80, and in many parts of the county the increase has been in a much greater ratio.'[627]

About this time a remedy was found in the south for leaving the land idle during the nine months between harvesting the corn crop in August, and sowing the turnip crop in the following June, by sowing rye, which was eaten green by the sheep in May, a good preparation for the succeeding winter crop. Turnip cutters were at last being used, and corn and cake crushers soon followed.

The seasons from 1838 to 1841 were bad, and must be characterized as a period of dearth, wheat keeping at a good price.[628] That of 1844-5 was remarkable for the first general appearance of the potato disease, not only in these islands but on the continent of Europe.[629] In August, 1846, the worst apprehensions of the failure of the crop were more than realized, and the terrible results in Ireland are well known. In the early part of 1847 there was a fear of scarcity in corn, and the price of wheat rose to 102s. 5d. in spite of an importation of 4,500,000 quarters, but this was largely owing to the absence of any reliable agricultural statistics, which were not furnished till 1866, and the price soon fell.[630]

We have now reached the period of free trade, when the Corn Laws, which had protected agriculture more or less effectually for so long, were definitely abandoned. That they had failed to prevent great fluctuations in the price of corn is abundantly evident, it is also equally evident that they kept up the average price; in the ten years from 1837 to 1846, the average price of wheat was 58s. 7d. a quarter, in the seven years from 1848 to 1853, the average price was 48s. 2d.[631]

The average imports of wheat and flour for the same period were 2,161,813 and 4,401,000 quarters respectively. But to obtain the real effect of free trade on prices, the prices for the period between 1815 and 1846 must be compared with those between 1846 and the present day, when the fall is enormous.

The Act of 1815, which Tooke said had failed to secure any one of the objects aimed at by its promoters, had received two important alterations. In 1828 (9 Geo. IV, c. 60) a duty of 36s. 8d. was imposed when the price was 50s., decreasing to 1s. when it was 73s.