AGRICOLA

AGRICOLA, John, a Saxon divine, born at Eisleben in 1492. He went as chaplain to Count Mansfeld, when that nobleman attended the elector of Saxony to the diet at Spire in 1526, and that of Augsburg in 1530. He was of a restless, ambitious temper, rivalled and wrote against Melanchthon, and gave Count Mansfeld occasion to reproach him severely. He obtained a professorship at Wittemberg, where he taught particular doctrines, and became founder of the sect of Antinomians; which occasioned warm disputes between him and Luther, who had before been his very good friend. But though he was never able to recover the favour either of the elector of Saxony or of Luther, he received some consolation from the fame he acquired at Berlin, where he became preacher at court; and was chosen, in 1548, in conjunction with Julius Phlug and Michael Holdingus, to compose the famous Interim, which made so much noise in the world. He died at Berlin in 1566.

IT is our principal object in this article to lay before our readers a view of the present state of British agriculture, particularly as the art is practised in our best cultivated counties. Much of what we shall state is derived from our own experience and observation; but we shall nevertheless be careful, on all matters of importance, to refer to the most approved authorities.

It is sufficiently evident that the culture of the soil must have somewhat preceded, and always kept pace with, the increase of population. When we read of the large armies brought into the field in the early ages, and the great number of inhabitants which some of the ancient cities are said to have contained, we must necessarily conclude that the labours of agriculture were conducted with skill, and that its produce was abundant. A considerable population may, no doubt, subsist upon a rich soil, even in a very rude state of the art, drawing from it only the supply of their own wants; but if much of the cultivator's time be required in the service of the public, and still more, if he has to provide for the subsistence and the luxury of large cities, he can obtain the necessary surplus produce only by successive improvements in his art. Not only his gross produce, but his net disposable produce, must be proportionally increased.

But of the rural economy even of the most civilized nations of antiquity, we are almost wholly ignorant. From the age of Moses, almost down to the commencement of the Christian era, though something may be gleaned from incidental notices in the Scriptures, and in the writings of a few ancient authors, we are quite unacquainted with the means by which food was obtained from the soil to support the rapid increase of mankind; especially when we find it accumulated on spots which seem to have been always naturally unproductive. We ought, perhaps, to except the Works and Days of Hesiod, who lived in the

tenth century before our era, and who has described at some length the labours and the products of the agriculture of Greece at that early period. His work contains almost all the information we possess respecting the rural economy of that celebrated people.

Among the Romans this art seems to have obtained a high degree of improvement. It was practised by the rich and the great, and described by their poets and his-
Agriculture.
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torians, several of whose works have reached our own times. These must be familiar to the classical scholar, and have been rendered accessible to all by Dickson, in his Husbandry of the Ancients, and other writers. We need therefore only mention the names of Cato, Varro, Virgil, Columella, Pliny, and Palladius, in the order in which they wrote. The treatises De Re Rustica of Varro and Columella are the most complete; but none of the Roman writers enables us to trace the rise and progress of agriculture, either in Italy or in any other country under their dominion. The most useful lesson they convey to the present age, perhaps, is the importance of attending to minute details, which their greatest names did not consider beneath their notice in the best period of their history.

From the fall of the Roman empire till the revival of Agriculture in the fifteenth century, little is known of the state of agriculture in any part of Europe. The historians of the period were too much occupied in recording military achievements, and with the rude policy and intestine broils of their respective countries, to give much attention to the peaceful, and at that time degraded, labours of the husbandman. The policy of the feudal system, the distribution of society which it occasioned, and the perpetual dissensions and petty hostilities which it engendered, furnish the best evidence of the low state of an art which can flourish only under the protection of law, and be carried on with success only by the energy of free

men. But, during this long interval, the population of Europe was divided into two great classes, of which by far the larger one was composed of bondmen, without property, or the power of acquiring it, and small tenants, very little superior to bondmen; and the other class, consisting chiefly of the great barons and their retainers, was more frequently employed in laying waste the fields of their rivals, than in improving their own. The superstition of the times, which destined a large portion of the country to the support of the church, and which, in some measure, secured it from predatory incursions, was the principal source of what little skill and industry were then displayed in the cultivation of the soil. "If we consider the ancient state of Europe," says Mr Hume,¹ "we shall find, that the far greater part of society were everywhere bereaved of their personal liberty, and lived entirely at the will of their masters. Every one that was not noble was a slave; the peasants were not in a better condition; even the gentry themselves were subjected to a long train of subordination under the greater barons, or chief vassals of the crown, who, though seemingly placed in a high state of splendour, yet, having but a slender protection from law, were exposed to every tempest of the state, and, by the precarious condition on which they lived, paid dearly for the power of oppressing and tyrannizing over their inferiors." "The villains were entirely occupied in the cultivation of their master's land, and paid their rents either in corn or cattle, and other produce of the farm, or in servile offices, which they performed about the baron's family, and upon farms which he retained in his own possession. In proportion as agriculture improved and money increased, it was found that these services, though extremely burdensome to the villain, were of little advantage to the master; and that the produce of a large estate could be much more conveniently disposed of by the peasants themselves, who raised it, than by the landlord or his bailiff, who were formerly accustomed to receive it. A commutation was therefore made of rents for services, and of money-rents for those in kind; and as men in a subsequent age discovered that farms were better cultivated where the farmer enjoyed security in his possession, the practice of granting leases to the peasant began to prevail, which entirely broke the bonds of servitude, already much relaxed from the former practices. The latest laws which we find in England for enforcing or regulating this species of servitude were enacted in the reign of Henry VII. And though the ancient statutes on this subject remain still unrepealed by Parliament, it appears, that before the end of Elizabeth, the distinction between villain and freeman was totally, though insensibly, abolished; and that no person remained in the state to whom the former laws could be applied."

But, long before the fifteenth century, it is certain that there was a class of tenants holding on leases for lives, or for a term of years, and paying a rent in land produce, in services, or in money. Whether they gradually sprung up from the class of bondmen, according to Lord Kames,² or existed from the earliest period of the feudal constitution, according to other writers,³ their number cannot be supposed to have been considerable during the middle ages. The stock which these tenants employed in cultivation commonly belonged to the proprietor, who received a proportion of the produce as rent; a system which still exists in France and in other parts of the Continent, where such tenants are called metayers, and some vestiges of

which may yet be traced in the steel-bow of the law of Scotland. Leases of the thirteenth century still remain,⁴ and both the laws and chartularies⁵ clearly prove the existence in Scotland of a class of cultivators distinct from the serfs or bondmen. Yet the condition of these tenants seems to have been very different from that of the tenants of the present day; and the lease approached nearer in its form to a few charter than to the mutual agreement now in use. It was of the nature of a beneficiary grant by the proprietor, under certain conditions, and for a limited period: the consent of the tenant seems never to have been doubted. In the common expression, "granting a lease," we have retained an idea of the original character of the deed, even to the present time.

The corn crops cultivated during this period seem to have been of the same species, though all of them probably much inferior in quality to what they are in the present day. Wheat, the most valuable grain, must have borne a small proportion, at least in Britain, to that of other crops; the remarkable fluctuation of price, its extreme scarcity, indicated by the extravagant rate at which it was sometimes sold, as well as the preparatory cultivation required, may convince us that its consumption was confined to the higher orders, and that its growth was by no means extensive. Rye and oats furnished the bread and drink of the great body of the people of Europe. Cultivated herbage and roots were then unknown in the agriculture of Britain. It was not till the end of the reign of Henry VIII. that any sallads, carrots, or other edible roots were produced in England. The little of these vegetables that was used, was formerly imported from Holland and Flanders. Queen Catharine, when she wanted a sallad, was obliged to dispatch a messenger thither on purpose.⁶

The ignorance and insecurity of those ages, which necessarily confined the cultivation of corn to a comparatively small portion of country, left all the rest of it in a state of nature, to be depastured by the inferior animals, then only occasionally subjected to the care and control of man. Cultivators were crowded together in miserable hamlets; the ground contiguous was kept continually under tillage; and beyond this, wastes and woodlands of a much greater extent were appropriated to the maintenance of their flocks and herds, which pastured indiscriminately, with little attention from their owners.

The low price of butcher-meat, though it was then the food of the common people, when compared with the price of corn, has been justly noticed by several writers as a decisive proof of the small progress of civilisation and industry.

According to the reports of a writer who has had access to the best sources of information, in addition to his own observations, the present state of the agriculture of the greater part of the Continent of Europe is not very different from what it was in Britain during the prevalence of the feudal system. "The greater part of France," he says, "a still much greater portion of Germany, and nearly the whole of Prussia, Austria, Poland, and Russia, present a wretched uniformity of system. It is called the three-course husbandry, consisting of, 1st, one year's clean fallow; 2d, winter corn, chiefly rye, with a proportion of wheat commensurate to the manure that can be applied; 3d, summer corn, or barley and oats. There are occasional and small deviations from this system. In some few cases potatoes, in others peas, are grown, in the fallow year;

but they are only minute exceptions to the generally established system. It is not surprising that under such a system the produce should not be much more than four times the quantity of seed, at which rate it is calculated, as appears to be rightly, by Baron Alexander Humboldt.

"The fields are almost universally uninclosed, and exposed to the most injurious effects of a changeable and an intemperate climate. The ancient feudal system of tenure is still continued, modified indeed, and softened in some few parts, but not to a degree or an extent that deserves to be taken into account in the view now under consideration of the countries as a whole. The peasants, for the most part, are adstricti glebae; and where, by recent laws, their condition has been changed, the practical effect has yet hardly had time to exhibit any observable improvement in their state. Labour, whether of men or of cattle, is usually exchanged for the occupancy of land; and hence the labour is performed in the most negligent and imperfect manner, that the vigilance of an overseer, who cannot be everywhere present, will allow.

"The lords of the soil, besides their demesnes, have the right of pasturage on the fields of their tenants from harvest to the next seed-time: hence none of those intervening crops which tend to enrich the soil can be cultivated without infringing on their rights.

"Among the cultivators of the land little or no accumulation of capital has been formed; from the lord to the lowest grade of the peasantry, all are alike destitute of disposable funds. The lords are only rich in land, and sufficiently at their ease, if that land be unencumbered with mortgages or annuities. The peasants, whether owners of the live stock and of the implements, or having the use of them with the land from its owners, are content to live on, from year to year, eating their own produce, growing their own wool and flax, and converting them into garments. They are quite satisfied if they can dispose of as much surplus produce as will pay the small share of money rent which becomes due to their lord." (Tracts relating to the Corn Trade and Corn Laws, by William Jacob, Esq. 1828.)

It is certain, however, that an improved system has been introduced, and is extending itself, though slowly, in many parts of the countries which this writer has mentioned. Public establishments have been formed, which afford examples of correct management; and by these means knowledge is diffused among the principal land-owners in the first instance, and must ere long descend to the cultivator. Since the peace, many of the former class have visited other countries, and particularly Great Britain, with a view to the improvement of their estates. Some of them have held out encouragement to settlers from this country; others carried back our best implements, with farm-bailliffs capable of instructing their people in the use of them, and of introducing our system of management generally; and not a few individuals of rank and influence in most parts of the Continent of Europe are now well acquainted with our agriculture, by their own personal observation. Prompted by interest, their active minds, no longer occupied in war, seem to enter eagerly upon this new field of employment. It is evident, indeed, from the great increase which has taken place of late in the population of these countries, as well as of our own, that a corresponding increase of produce must now be drawn from the soil. In all old peopled countries, the extension of tillage to fresh lands, without any improvement in the management, presents only a temporary and very limited resource.

At present, however, we have certainly little to learn

from the agriculture of other countries; at least very little that can be beneficially introduced into our climate, which forbids any attempt at cultivating the fruits of the south of Europe. Even on a similar soil, and in the same latitude, the labours of the husbandman must be to a considerable extent directed and controlled by the local circumstances in which he is placed. This, perhaps, is the principal reason why the old system of successive crops of corn still prevails so generally throughout the Continent. The demand for butcher-meat, for instance, may not be such as to afford a suitable return for the extended culture of turnips and other ameliorating crops, which are found so beneficial in this country.

We should except from this remark much of the Netherlands, and probably a part of Italy. Flanders has long been celebrated for its agriculture; and the care and success with which its labours are conducted seem not unworthy the attention of our best cultivators. The culture of the Vale of Arno, in Italy, also presents an interesting object, and has been warmly eulogized by Chateauxieux and other travellers. But instead of going into details here, we shall notice, under the heads to which they belong, the practices that appear to us of most importance in the agriculture of other countries, when we come to describe our own.

Before entering upon this our main object, it may not be without its interest to present a concise view of the progress of our agriculture to its present state, from the rude condition in which, in common with that of the rest of Europe, it was found at the time when we first have authorities to refer to on the subject. Such a view must necessarily include notices of the principal laws affecting it, as well as of our early writers, whose works are very little known; and it may serve to convey some idea of the successive changes that have occurred in the condition of the great body of our people.

The subject of this article will thus be considered under two divisions. In the first, we shall treat of the history of British agriculture; and in the second, of its present state; describing under the latter the crops, culture, and general management adapted to different soils, agreeably to the practice of our best cultivators.