primitive plough, the spinning wheel, the hand loom, and a few other rude appliances assisted the manual worker in his tasks, while the horse and water furnished the power used to turn the wheels of some small factories. The commodities so produced were transported by slow and tedious methods to the markets. Man seemed to be a helpless pigmy, confined and overawed in his activities by the tremendous forces of an apparently uncontrollable natural world. The great manufacturing cities had not yet sprung up; there was no "Black Country," with its forest of chimney stacks, pouring forth clouds of sulphurous smoke to darken the sunlight; there were no volcanic blast furnaces to make the night hideous; no trains shrieking and thundering across plain and under mountain; there were no vast armies of workers even, collected in great factories, stifled by heat and dust, and deafened by the dull, monotonous roar of machinery.

Sec. 4.—Extent of Agriculture. In 1760, one-third of the workers of England were agricultural labourers, and a large number of those engaged in regular manufacturing industries continued to work in the fields during certain portions of the year. It is estimated that 3,600,000, out of a population of 8,500,000, lived in the counrry, and that their income was £66,000,000, out of a total national income of £119,500,000. While these figures are not exact, they show that agriculturalists had more than their proportionate share of the income. This was probably due to the fact that machinery was not yet employed in manufacturing to any great extent, and a large number of workers was required to turn out a comparatively small product. We have no very reliable information as to the amount of land which was

actually in cultivation at this time.

Gregory King

estimated it at about 22,000,000 acres, or about threefifths of the total area of the country, while, according to the reckoning of a land-agent in 1729, one-half of the country was waste. Though these estimates may be far from accurate, there is sufficient evidence to warrant a conclusion that there were at the close of the eighteenth century throughout England vast stretches of waste and unimproved land which are now fertile and productive fields. A large portion of Essex was covered by Hainault and Epping Forest. Wide tracts of the weald of Surrey lay unused and desolate. The bogs and fens of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire were yet untapped, while barren expanses of land, considered inevitably sterile, were lying unused. "Robin Hood" would have found his forest of Sherwood still covering the greater part of Nottinghamshire. Derbyshire was a black region of ling, and from the northern point of the county to the extremity of Northumberland-a distance of 150 miles-the traveller would, like Jeanie Deans, encounter nothing but wastes. In 1734, the forest of Knaresborough 'was so thick with wood that he was thought a cunning fellow that could readily find these Spaws' of Harrowgate. The road from Beverley to Hull was marked out by willows, which showed above the swamp; at dusk the bells rang from Barton-uponHumber to guide the traveller; from Sleaford to Brigg, the land lighthouse of Dunstan pillar directed wayfarers across a solitary waste."

Sec. 5.-State of Agriculture and the System of Cultivation. It is difficult to make any safe generalisations about the state of agriculture in all England, for conditions varied in different parts. In some places we hear of land

"cultivated in the most husbandlike manner, richly manured, well-peopled, and yielding a hundred times the produce that it did in its former state." On account of the lack of general diffusion of knowledge, improvements in fertilising and cultivation used in some portions were unknown in others. In the South Country the cultivation seems to have been uniformly good, while throughout the North there were great tracts of land exhausted by continued crops and ignorant tillers. However, for more than fifty years before the Industrial Revolution there were extensive improvements in the methods of agriculture, brought about, for the most part, by the landed gentry who had acquired a knowledge of experimental farming, and whose capital enabled them to put it to practical test. Root-crops and artificial grasses were adopted to utilise fallow land and poor pastures. The introduction of rotation of crops did away with exhaustion of the soil. "Writers of this time note that country gentlemen talked about land and its properties, the benefit of certain courses, the advantage of turnip fallows, and the economics of agricultural machinery, about breeds of cattle, sheep, and pigs, with the same interest which their fathers and grandfathers used to exhibit on the subjects of the stable and kennel only."

More than one-half of the land in use was cultivated on the primitive system of common field tillage. Though the Peasants' Revolt and other economic forces had broken up the old manorial system, the village organisation as the centre of open field farms. still existed over a large portion of the country. The land attached to the village was composed of arable, meadow, and pasture. Though the average holding

consisted of about eighteen acres of arable, two of meadow, and common pasture rights, in reality the holdings varied greatly in size and character of tenure. The farmers were tenants by freehold, copyhold, leasehold, at will, or from year to year. The arable land was laid off into three fields, and each field was subdivided by balks into strips about three yards wide, containing an acre or a half-acre. Each farmer held at least one strip in each field. One of the arable fields. was left fallow every year; while, in the other two, wheat and barley, oats, beans, pease were grown. The acre and half-acre holdings of each individual were scattered throughout the three fields. The meadow land was also laid off in strips, for which the villagers drew lots. When the hay had been taken off, the meadow land was thrown open to the village herd. The waste land about the village was also common pasture.

The evils of this system were numerous; but the most grievous may be summed up as follows:-(1) Rotation or change of crops was almost impossible, as such action could only be taken with the assent of the entire community; (2) an immense amount of land was wasted by the balks and footpaths; (3) common pasturage of the arable land made it impossible to grow winter crops; (4) a vast deal of time was consumed by labourers "in travelling to many dispersed pieces of land from one end of the parish to the other"; (5) quarrelling and litigation over the little strips were continuous; (6) the common herding of cattle and sheep made it impossible to prevent disease and to improve the breed. On the whole, the old communal system of agriculture, however picturesque and Arcadian

it may appear to some people at this distant day, made radical improvement impossible, and from the standpoint of scientific production was wasteful and laborious. The enclosure of commons, which did more than anything else to break up the old open field system, had been going on since early in the Middle Ages; but the practice increased rapidly in the eighteenth century. Between 1710 and 1760, 334,974 acres were enclosed, and between 1760 and 1843 the enclosure amounted almost to 7,000,000 acres.

Whatever injustice the enclosure may have wrought, it is evident that intensive agriculture and the production of the greatest amount of stuff with the least expenditure and waste of energy were absolutely impossible under the old system. The intensive agriculture added greatly to the output; but it certainly did work hardship to the poor, who were cleared off the land to make room for the vast field system and sheep and cattle raising. A few individuals were made rich, prices were probably lowered; but the poor at large suffered in several ways.

Sec. 6.-Life in the Agricultural Village. The condition of the agricultural labourers was, comparatively speaking, good. Wages ranged from 8s. to 10s. per week, while the cost of board was 5s. or 6s. Rents were low, foodstuffs and clothing abundant, and the regular_wages could be supplemented with earnings from spinning, weaving, and lace-making. Communities were isolated through lack of facilities for communication, life was simple, and education certainly not wide-spread; for we are told by a contemporary that "not one farmer in five thousand reads at all." Indeed, there was little necessity for communication with the world at large. The villages