CHAPTER XXVI. Political despondency at the close of the American War.-Supposed decay of Population. -Its real increase.-Development of the productive power of the coumry.-Agricul ture extended and improved.-Agricultural condition of the Eastern, South Midland, North Midland, and South Eastern, counties.-Norfolk.-Mr. Coke.-Suffolk.Essex. Buckinghamshire. —Oxfordshire. - Northamptonshire. - Bedfordshire. Francis, duke of Bedford.-Improved breeds of sheep and oxen.-Robert Bakewell. -Consumption of animal food in England.--Cambridgeshire.-Lincolnshire.-The Great Level of the Fens.-Lincoln Heath and the Wolds. - Nottinghamshire. Derbyshire.-Surrey.-Middlesex.-Kent.-Sussex.-Hants.-Berkshire.-Windsor Forest. There were THE summer which followed the close of the American war is described as "an amazing and portentous one."* alarming meteors and tremendous thunder storms. weeks of June, July, and August, the sun was clouded over with a smoky fog that proceeded from whatever quarter the wind blew. At noon, it cast "a rust-coloured ferruginous light; " at rising and setting, it was "lurid and blood-coloured." ↑ The phenomenon prevailed over the whole of Europe. The people looked with a superstitious awe on the "disastrous twilight." The poet asked of contending factions, "Is it a time to wrangle, when the props Politicians of With "fear of change," monarchs were perplexed. every rank, subject as Englishmen are to skiey influences, then especially believed that their country was ruined. Sir John Sinclair, one of the most enlightened men of his time, who, with a few others, had confidence in the resources of British spirit and industry, ventured to hold a different opinion. He says, that in 1783, in the midst of such terror and despondency, he hesitated not to assert that Britain might still preserve its elevated rank amongst the powers of Europe, although his ideas were then considered visionary.§ He rested his confidence upon the principle that debts and taxes were not alone sufficient to effect the ruin of a nation; Ibid. White's" Selborne," Letter lxv. 1 Cowper, "Task," book, ii. POLITICAL DESPONDENCY. 297 and he was supported by the fact, that for a century previous the same gloomy prognostications had always resulted in the undenia ble advance of the country in material prosperity. Some of these prognostications were not the mere clamours of popular ignorance, or factious exaggeration, or foreign jealousy. Lord Lyttleton, in 1739; lord Bolingbroke, in 1745; David Hume, in 1761; Adam Smith, in 1776; Dr. Price, in 1777; lord Stair, in 1783,-each honestly believed that England was fast approaching the condition of inevitable bankruptcy. In 1784, marshal Conway, who, as one of the Shelburne administration, had been ejected from power in the previous year, writes to his brother," I feel rather obliged than angry at all those who have any how contributed to shuffle me out of the most troublesome and dangerous scene this country was ever engaged in. I don't desire to be an actor in the ruin of my country; and if the vessel must sink, I had rather be a passenger than the pilot. . . . . The sums spent in losing America are a blow we shall never recover." The statesmen and economists who predicted absolute ruin from any increase of the Public Debt beyond a certain maximum -twenty-five millions, or a hundred millions-never appear to have adequately contemplated the possibility of the productive power of the country keeping pace with the additional load of taxation. Sir William Blackstone, who in general exhibits a pleasant optimism as to matters of government, speaks out very plainly as to the in conveniences of enormous taxes caused by the magnitude of na tional incumbrances. He tells the public creditor that money in the funds does really and intrinsically exist only in “the land, the trade, and the personal industry of the subject, from which the money must arise that supplies the several taxes." The pledges for the security of these debts being thus defined, the question of the security can only be answered by estimating the capacity of a country to make constant advances in a course of material improv ment. The common notions of the decline of England that prevailed during the first and second decades of the reign of George III. were associated with the vehement assertion that her population was decreasing. Poets and statists equally maintained that “wealth accumulates and men decay." Goldsmith admits that the depopulation which his exquisite poem deplores, is affirmed by several of his wisest and best friends as "no where to be seen." Yet Goldsmith had supporters in his opinion, who had no pretensions to "the • MS. Letter in the possession of the author of the " Popular History." t Kerr's edit. vol. i. p. 322. "Deserted Village." poet's imagination." Dr. Price maintained, in 1777, that England and Wales contained no more than 4,763,000 souls. Arthur Young, in 1770, says, "it is asserted by those writers who affect to run down our affairs, that, rich as we are, our population has suffered: that we have lost a million and a half of people since the Revolution; and that we are at present declining in numbers." The estimates of Gregory King, founded upon the Return of the Hearth-money collectors, exhibited a population of five millions and a half at the period of the Revolution.† Either those estimates were utterly fallacious, and ought to have shown a million and a half less of people; or the belief was a delusion that "it is employment that creates population "that "all industrious countries are populous, and proportionably to the degree of their industry."‡ From the accession of George I. to the war with the North American Colonies, a period of sixty years, the country had been steadily progressing in a course of improvement; in partial inclosures of cultivable waste land, in better methods of husbandry, în extension of manufactures, in more complete means of internal communication. The advance was slow, compared with what remained to be done. An elaborate and careful statistical writer of 1774, in setting forth the improving position of the country, puts in the title-page of his work that it is "intended to show that we have not as yet approached near the summit of improvement, but that it will afford employment to many generations before they push to their utmost extent the natural advantages of Great Brit ain." § Could this sensible writer have contemplated the possible approaches to "the summit of improvement," made by only two generations, his readers of that period would have regarded him as a madman. Yet at that period the industrial energies of the people were stimulated to turn aside from the beaten track in many new directions. The capability of Britain greatly to multiply her resour ces began to be dimly perceived. We now know, as a reliable fact, that population had increased, and was increasing. A comparison of the excess of Baptisms over Burials, corrected by the experience of positive enumerations, shows, that from 1751 to 1781, the population had increased at a rate exceeding 400,000 for each decennial period; the increase in the whole of the previous fifty years having been little above 200,000. Upon that increase of nearly a million and a quarter in thirty years, there was a still larger increase of more than a million and a half in the twenty years Young, "Northern Tour," vol. iv. p. 556. ↑ Ante, vol. iv. p. 384, and Table, p. 438 4. Young, "Northern Tour," vol. iv. p. 531. Dr. Campbell, "Political Survey," 2 vols. 4to. AGRICULTURE EXTENDED AND IMPROVED. 299 from 1781 to 1801.* The start in the national industry, supplying new sources of profitable labour, and new means of subsistence, to increasing numbers, appears to have been singularly concurrent with that outburst of public spirit which attended the administra. tion of the first William Pitt. The shutting up of one portion of British commerce by the war with America had no permanent effect upon the development of the general prosperity of the country; although we are in no condition to judge how far that development might have been impeded by the waste of capital in war. The industrial period, from the accession of George III. to the war of the French Revolution, is a very interesting one to be described in detail. We apply ourselves to the task, in something like a continuation of the plan of that general view of National Progress which we have given at the period of the accession of the House of Hanover, and partially through the reign of George I. † Arthur Young, one of the most exact of those economical in quirers who had no official data upon which to found their calcula tions, in reckoning the entire population, in 1770, at 8,500,000 souls, appears to have over estimated the total number by about a million and a quarter. The population of agriculture, exclusive of land lords, clergy, and parochial poor, he reckoned at 2,800,000. The number of farmers he reckoned at 111,498; of men-servants and labourers, at 557,490. In the census of 1851, we have a return for England and Wales of 225,318 occupiers of land, employing 1,445,067 labourers. The farmers would thus appear to have doubled in eighty.years; the labourers to have almost trebled. This comparative estimate, imperfect as it is, enables us to form some notion of the agricultural industry of those eighty years, as giving the means of subsistence to all who were employed upon thet land. But the improvement appears far more striking when we consider that, in 1770,-taking the population at Young's estimate of 8,500,000, and reckoning the adult males at a fourth of that number,-one-third of the adult male population, as enumerated by him,' was employed in providing food for themselves and their families, and for the other two-thirds of the population; in other words, whilst one man was cultivating the land, two men were engaged in other occupations. This proportion indicates a high state of civilization. But a much higher condition was reached in 1851, when only 26 per cent. of the adult males were agricultural; that is, whilst one man was cultivating the land, three men were engagedin some other employment. The ascendancy of scientific theory *"Report on the Census of 1851," p. lxviii. ↑ Ante, vol. iv. chapters XIX. and XX. over traditional practice has produced this striking change; and that ascendancy has been called forth more and more by the cer tainty of the profitable application of capital to agricultural enterprise. This application of capital, in the first twenty years of the reign of George III., may be in some degree indicated by the circumstance that the Inclosure Bills passed from 1760 to 1779 were more than a thousand in number. Improved methods of husbandry were concurrent with this extension of the area of cultivation. The great features of this period of the development of the vast productive powers of the soil are very marked; and without touching upon the technicalities of agricultural science, we may not unprofitably enter upon such a general view of the condition of particular districts, as may show how earnestly many were then labouring to make two blades of grass grow where one grew before and yet how much they left to be done by the labours of other generations. Incidentally we shall notice the condition and manners of the rural population. We commenced our previous general view of the National Industry with a brief survey of the West of England, the seat of the greatest commercial and manufacturing prosperity at the beginning of the eighteenth century. We now propose to make a similiar examination of the agricultural condition of the East of England, continuing our former sketch of the development of the resources of that portion of our island. We use the term "East" as a general phrase, in the same way that Arthur Young used it in his "Farmer's Tour through the East of England." If a line be drawn from the British Channel, keeping to the east of the Avon, on to the Humber, also keeping to the east of the Trent, it will include four of our great Registration Divisions, in which pastoral and agricultural industry is the predominant feature now, as it has been from the earliest times. These divisions, the Eastern, the South Midland, the North Midland, the South Eastern,-comprise twenty counties out of the forty of England. Their progress in population was not very marked till after the beginning of the present century. According to Gregory King they numbered,at the Revolution, 2,364,735 souls. They had increased, in the census of 1801, to 3,078,591; but in that of 1851, to 5,674,494. They always fully kept pace with the general advance of the population of England and Wales, amounting, as nearly as may be, to one-third of the whole, at the three several periods. “All England may be carved out of Norfolk, and represented therein," says the quaint Thomas Fuller. He there saw fens and See Table, ante, vol, iv. p. 438. |