The New Hampshire Gazette

From the last number of the Edinburgh Review:

PROGRESS OF AGRICULTURE IN ENGLAND.

The introduction of fallows between successive corn crops, was a very great improvement on the previous practice; but the substitution of green crops for fallow, on all but stiff clay lands, has been the greatest of all improvements ever made in agriculture; and has effected as great and beneficial a revolution in it, as the introduction of the steam engine and of the spinning-frame has done in manufactures. There is abundant evidence to show that the culture of the turnip, as a field crop, was carried on to some extent in several English counties, in the latter part of the 17th century. But the practice spread only by very slow degrees; and it was not till its introduction into the county of Norfolk in the reigns of George I. and George II., when it was prosecuted on a large scale by Lord Viscount Townshend and others, that its signal importance became obvious. At the period referred to, the whole northwestern part of that county, which has long been one of the best cultivated districts of the empire, consisted of mere sandy wastes, sheep-walks and warrens, worth little or nothing. These were converted into highly productive arable land, by enclosing, marling, and the aid of the turnip husbandry, which is, as it were, the corner stone of the Norfolk, or improved system of husbandry. The same practices that had produced such splendid results in Norfolk—that had made sandy wastes yield the most luxuriant crops of wheat and barley—have been gradually extended, with similar effects, to many other parts of the kingdom. The produce in corn of the light soils, in all the moderately well cultivated districts of the empire, has in consequence been more than trebled; at the same time that a vast supply of green food has been obtained for the feeding of cattle and sheep, and the production of the most valuable manure.

But, signal as has been the improvement in arable husbandry since 1760, the improvements made in stock husbandry, or in breeding and fattening of cattle, have been still more considerable. No efforts for this purpose seem to have been made with judgment and proper perseverance till after 1750, when Mr. Bakewell of Dishley, in Leicestershire, began his career. Mr. Culley, of Northumberland, soon after entered on the same course; and the signal success by which their efforts were attended, roused a spirit of emulation in a host of others. But the rapid increase of manufactures and commerce, and consequently of the town population, after the peace of Paris, in 1763, by creating a corresponding demand for butcher's meat, gave the principal stimulus to the improvements that have since been made in stock husbandry. It is not easy to over-rate their importance. We have already seen that, at an average, the weight of cattle and sheep has been a good deal more than doubled since about 1750; so that a stock of 5,000,000 head of cattle at present, would be more than equal to one of 10,000,000 at that epoch. But the number, as well as the weight of cattle, having been very materially increased in the interval, the supply of butcher's meat must have increased in a corresponding proportion, or been at least trebled. There has, also, owing to the same cause, been a very great increase in the product of wool.

The supply of the latter article produced in England and Wales, in 1800, was estimated at about 384,000 packs, of 240 lbs each. But owing to the increased size of the animal, and the greater weight of the fleece, the same number of sheep that produced 384,000 packs in 1800, were estimated by the best informed wool-growers and wool-staplers, to produce 463,000 in 1830, being an increase, in the interval of no less than 20 per cent. It is true that the quality of the wool has rather deteriorated, for it seems to be impossible to procure both a heavy and a fine fleece. Taking however, the increased weight of the carcase and the increased weight of the fleece into account, sheep are believed to be much more profitable at present than at any former period; and, for the last three or four years, they have been the most productive species of stock kept in the kingdom.

It would be curious to trace how, in husbandry, as in other things, one improvement grows out of, and is dependent on another. The grand improvement in modern agriculture—that by which it is mainly distinguished from the old—the universal introduction and superior management of green crops, may be in no inconsiderable degree ascribed to the anxiety of the farmers to procure an abundant and suitable supply of food for their stock; the increased demand for the latter being, as already stated, occasioned by the wonderful growth of commerce and manufactures.

From the close of the American war, the progress of improvement in Scotland has been rapid beyond all previous example. This has been owing to a variety of causes; but principally to the extraordinary progress made in commerce and manufactures since that period. In the distracted state in which Scotland was formerly placed, there could be no considerable progress; but, after the battle of Culloden had extinguished the hopes of the Jacobites, and the abolition of hereditary jurisdictions had paved the way for the introduction of a regular system of government, a spirit of industry and enterprise began to be diffused on all sides. A good many branches of trade and manufacture carried on in England were introduced into Scotland soon after the peace of 1763; and not a few of them were prosecuted with much success. Their progress was checked for a while by the American war; but after the treaty of Paris, in 1783, they acquired more than their former vigor; others were introduced, and all of them have since continued, with few, and those but transient, interruptions, to advance with a rapidity that could not previously have been supposed possible.

"This unprecedented extension of manufacturing and commercial industry, occasioned a corresponding increase of wealth and population, particularly in towns and villages. Improved accommodations of all sorts began to be in universal demand: and besides the greater quantity of the inferior sorts of food required to supply the increasing population, a novel, or at least a vastly increased market was opened for wheat and butcher meat.—These circumstances had the most astonishing influence over agriculture. The new and constantly increasing markets, established at their very doors, stimulated the farmers to put forth all their energies, and to avail themselves of discoveries and practices to which they had hitherto been total strangers. In a few years the face of the country was completely changed; and its productive capacities increased in a degree that the most sanguine projector of any previous period could not have conceived possible."