1760-1783.] POPULATION-ITS SUPPOSED DECAY-ITS REAL INCREASE. 3 "the 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, in 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 Britain." § 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 resources began to be dimly perceived. We now know, as a reliable fact, that the 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 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 administration 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 Young, "Northern Tour," vol. iv. p. 556. + Ante, vol. v. p. 3, and Table, p. 47. Young, "Northern Tour," vol. iv. p. 551. § Dr. Campbell, "Political Survey," 2 vols. 4to. 4 AGRICULTURE EXTENDED AND IMPROVED. [1760-1783. 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 inquirers who had no official data upon which to found their calculations, 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 landlords, 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 the 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 engaged in some other employment. The ascendancy of scientific theory over traditional practice has produced this striking change; and that ascendancy has been called forth more and more by the certainty 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 similar examination of the agricultural condition of the East of England, continuing our former sketch of the development of * Ante, vol. v. chapters I. and II. 1760-1783.] AGRICULTURE OF THE EAST OF ENGLAND-NORFOLK, 5 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 heaths, light and deep soils, sand and clay, meadows and pasture, arable and woodlands. The variety of the shire made its ancient cultivation necessarily as various. Experimental agriculture proceeded very slowly. The fens were undrained; the sands were unmarled. Gradually Norfolk, and its neighbour Suffolk, became the nurseries of what was termed "the new husbandry." Arthur Young states that at a period not beyond sixty years, forty years, and even thirty years, from the time when he travelled through Norfolk, all the northern and western, and a part of the eastern, tracts of the county were sheep-walks, let as low as from 6d. to 1s. 6d., or 2s. an acre.† The great change came with inclosures, long leases, and large farms, by the marling of light lands, and by the introduction of an excellent course of crops, in which the culture of turnips and clover was the distinguishing feature. "Turnips on well-manured land, thoroughly hoed, are the only fallow in the Norfolk course." Farmers in many other districts had attempted the turnip husbandry, but found it unprofitable through their own ignorance and slovenliness. In the East Riding of Yorkshire very few would incur the labour of hoeing their turnips. Some alleged that small turnips were better than large, because the sheep would eat up the small and leave much of the large. The wisest of the Norfolk farmers sliced their turnips, even without a special machine for saving that labour. The four-course system of crops was that of the Norfolk farmers-turnips, barley, clover, wheat. Many other cultivators attempted to obtain two and even three white crops in succession, and then left the land to recruit itself in a year, or several years, of barrenness, in which the rapid growth of weeds made the supposed rest a real exhaustion. Six years after Arthur Young had been eulogizing the husbandry of a portion of Norfolk, Mr. Coke came into possession of his estate at Holkham. In that year of 1776 the whole district was uninclosed. The only wheat consumed in that part of the county was imported. Mr. Coke "converted West Norfolk from a rye-growing to a corn-growing district."§ But he did something even better. Unable * See Table, ante, vol. v. p. 47. "Eastern Tour," vol. ii. p. 150. Earl Spencer in "Journal of Royal Agricultural Society," vol. iii. p. 1. 6 MR. COKE-SUFFOLK. [1760–1783. to let his estate even at five shillings an acre, he determined to become a farmer himself. He did not set about his work with the self-conceit that might have been produced by a large fortune and high connections. He gathered about him all the practical agriculturists of his district, who came once a year to partake his hospitality, and to communicate their experience to the spirited young man who wanted to learn. He very soon was enabled to become an instructor himself. The annual sheep-shearings of Holkham grew famous throughout the civilized world. Men came from every quarter to see a great English gentleman-who had raised his rents from tens to hundreds, and had yet enriched his tenants as much as himself,-mixing, with a far nobler simplicity than that of the feudal times, with guests of every rank; seeking from the humblest yeoman who was earnest in his calling the knowledge of some new fact that would benefit his district and his country. Mr. Coke's agricultural knowledge was not mere theory. He taught the Norfolk farmers to turn their turnip-husbandry to a better use than that of producing manure, by teaching them how to improve the qualities of their stock, in the judgment of which he was thoroughly skilled. During his long life he had the satisfaction of seeing most of the triumphs of scientific husbandry; and his example pointed the way to that continued course of improvement, which has effected such marvels since the British agriculturist became self-reliant, and saw that his prosperity needed no protective laws to maintain a supply of food quite commensurate with the rapid multiplication of the people. The agriculture of many parts of Suffolk is described by Arthur Young as emphatically "true husbandry." He says, "those who exalt the agriculture of Flanders so high in comparison with that of Britain, have not, I imagine, viewed with attention the country in question." Thomas Tusser, who was a Suffolk farmer in the middle of the sixteenth century, attributes the plenty of Suffolk-the mutton, beef, corn, butter, cheese, and the abundant work for the labouring man-to the system of inclosures, which he contrasts with the common fields of Norfolk. Suffolk, as well as Essex, was very early a county "inclosed into petty quillets," according to Fuller, whence the proverb "Suffolk stiles," and "Essex stiles." Sir John Cullum, in 1784, describes the drainage of the arable lands as the great improvement that had fertilized spots that before produced but little. The farmer was no longer content to let his soil be "water-slain," the old expressive term in Suffolk for undrained wet land. He knew nothing of draining-tiles; but he cut drains two feet deep, and wedge-shaped, filling them with bushes, and with haulm over the bushes. Sir John shows how the cultivators had learned the value of manure, instead of evading the compulsory clause of their leases by which they were bound not to sell the manure made in their own yards. He paints, as "the late race of farmers," those who "lived in the midst of their enlightened neighbours, like beings of another order. In their personal labour they were indefatigable; in their dress, homely; in their manners, rude." Their "enlightened neighbours," he says, lived in well-furnished houses; actually knew the use of the barometer; and instead of exhibiting at church the cut of a coat half a century old, they had every article of dress spruce and modern. The ancient farmers had, however, a spirit of emulation amongst them, which they displayed in the drawing-matches of their famous Suffolk punches-that wonderful breed of which two would plough an acre of strong wheat land in one day. We have the details of a drawing-match in 1724.* Young says of this breed, that "they are all taught to draw in concert; that teams would fall upon their knees at the word of command, and at a variation of the word would rise and put out all their strength."+ Improving as was the general agriculture upon the good lands of Suffolk, the sandy districts on the shores of the Channel were in a miserable condition, before some tincture of geological science had taught the cultivator to look for the elements of fertility in the organic matter below the sand. Crabbe, with his exquisite fidelity, has described the husbandry of his own native district of the river Alde. It is a most impressive picture, not only of the peculiar barrenness of that district, but of other districts where slovenly cultivation had not called forth the resources of art to aid the churlishness of nature: "Lo! where the heath, with withering brake grown o'er, Rank weeds, that every art and care defy, The Suffolk labourers were fed abundantly, but somewhat coarsely. They ate their country's rye-bread with their country's stony cheese-" too hard to bite," as Bloomfield found it; whilst the farmer luxuriated in his "meslin bread," half wheat and half rye. The plough-boy's breakfast was the brown bread soaked in skimmed milk. When the country was over-run with rabbits, before the improved system of agriculture was introduced, the in-door servants stipulated that they should not be fed with "hollow-meat," as rabbit flesh was termed, more than a certain number of days in the week.§ Fuller speaks of the rabbits of Norfolk as "an army of natural pioneers"—the great suppliers of the fur for the gowns of grave citizens, and of " half beavers," the common hats. The trencher was not then superseded by pewter and earthenware. The old simplicity was not gone out: : "Between her swagging panniers' load A farmer's wife to market rode." ¶ The good matron looked impatiently for the "pack man," who came to her gate periodically with fineries from Norwich or Ipswich; and with smuggled tea from the eastern coast, when three-fifths of the tea used was clandestinely imported. She delighted in the housewifery of the "horky," when the last load had come home with garlands and flags, and the lord of the harvest, the "Eastern Tour," vol. ii. p. 174. § Forby's "Vocabulary of East Anglia," vol. ii. p. 423. "History of Hawsted," chap. iv. "The Village," book ii. Il "Worthies." Gay. |