deposited in the mill in an hour."* The drudging and unskilled labourers who would have toiled in carrying up the grain are free to do some skilled labour, of which the amount required is constantly increasing; and the cost saved by the elevator goes towards the great universal fund, out of which more labour and better labour are to find the means of employment. QUESTIONS UPON CHAPTER X. 1. What are the two great forces by which capital and labour now work? 2. What effect have the applications of science to the manufacturing arts? 3. How are these application principally displayed? 4. What was the opinion of a Glasgow weaver in 1827 on the subject of machinery. 5. What was the principle involved in this opinion? 6. How did this principle embarrass the agricultural labourers who wished to destroy all machinery? 7. If these labourers had succeeded in destroying all machinery what would have been the effect on labour and on production? 8. When may a less perfect machine be preferred to a more perfect one? 9. Of what is the cost of production in agriculture made up? 10. Under what circumstances is the dearer machine preferable to the cheaper? 11. What makes a machine perfect? 12. What converts a hand-tool into what is called a machine? 13. What is the great difference between man in a rude and man in a civilized state of society? 14. Mention an instance of the state of a people without tools. 15. What was the condition of labourers in England before there were any machines ? 16. What was the effect on the condition of the labourer of agricultural improvement? 17. By what is the value of labour to be measured? 18. Is it desirable to obtain a thing with no labour at all? 19. Is it desirable or not to obtain a thing with the least possible labour? 20. How are objections against machinery affected by this admission? 21. What would be the difference in the cost to the consumer of flour ground by hand, and flour ground at a mill? 22. Is the quantity of labour diminished by the introduction of machinery? 23. How does the saving in labour by the introduction of machinery have the effect of increasing the demand for labour? *Whitworth's Special Report. CHAPTER XI. Present and former condition of the country-Progress of cultivation-Evil influence of feudalism-State of agriculture in the sixteenth centuryModern improvements-Prices of wheat-Increased breadth of land under cultivation-Average consumption of wheat-Implements of agriculture now in use. IT T is the remark of foreigners, as they travel from the seacoast to London, that the country is a garden. It has taken nineteen centuries to make it such a garden. The marshes in which the legions of Julius Cæsar had to fight up to their loins, with the Britons to whom these swamps were habitual, are now drained. The dense woods in which the Druids worshipped are now cleared. Populous towns and cheerful villages offer themselves on every side. Wherever the eye reaches there is cultivation. Instead of a few scattered families painfully earning a subsistence by the chase, or by tilling the land without the knowledge and the instruments that science has given to the aid of manual labour,-that cultivation is carried on with a systematic routine that improves the fertility of a good season, and diminishes the evils of a bad. Instead of the country being divided amongst hostile tribes, who have little communication, the whole territory is covered with a network of roads, and canals, and navigable rivers, and railroads, through which means there is an universal market, and wherever there is demand there is instant supply. Rightly considered, there is no branch of production which has so largely benefited by the power of knowledge as that of agriculture. It was ages before the great physical changes were accomplished which we now behold on every side, and we are still in a state of progress towards the perfection of those results which an over-ruling Providence had in store for the human race, in the gradual manifestation of those discoveries which have already so changed our condition and the condition of the world. It being estimated that the total area of England and Wales is about thirtyseven millions of acres, nearly twenty-nine millions are held to be cultivated. It is further estimated that four million more acres are capable of cultivation. The history of cultivation in Great Britain is full of instruction as regards the inefficiency of mere traditional practice and the slowness with which scientific improvement establishes its dominion. It is no part of our plan to follow out this history; but a few scattered facts may not be without their value. The oppressions of tenants that were perpetrated under the feudal system, when ignorant lords of manors impeded production by every species of extortion, may be estimated by one or two circumstances. There can be no doubt that the prosperity of a tenant is the best security for the landlord's due share of the produce of the land. Without manure, in some form or other, the land cannot be fertilized: the landlords knew this, but they required to have a monopoly of the fertility. Their tenants kept a few sheep, but the landlords reserved to themselves the exclusive privilege of having a sheepfold; so that the little tenants could not fold their own sheep on their own lands, but were obliged to let them be folded with those of their lord, or pay a fine.* The flour mill was the exclusive property of the manorial lord, whether lay or ecclesiastical; and whatever the distance, or however bad the road, the tenant could grind nowhere but at the lord's mill. No doubt the rent of land was exceedingly low, and the lord was obliged to maintain himself and his dependents by adding something considerable to his income by many forms of legalized extortion. The rent of land was so low because the produce was * Cullum's "History of Hawsted." inconsiderable, to an extent which will be scarcely comprehended by modern husbandmen. In the law commentary called 'Fleta,' written about the end of the thirteenth century, the author says the farmer will be a loser unless corn be dear, if he obtains from an acre of wheat only three times the seed sown. He calculated the low produce at six bushels an acre: the average produce was perhaps little higher; we have distinct records of its being no higher a century afterwards. In 1390, at Hawsted, near Bury, the produce of the manor-farm was forty-two quarters of wheat or three hundred and thirty-six bushels, from fifty-seven acres; and upon an average of three years sixty-one acres produced only seventy quarters, or five hundred and sixty bushels. Sir John Cullum, who collected these details from the records of his own property, says, "no particular dearness of corn followed, so that, probably, those very scanty crops were the usual and ordinary effects of the imperfect husbandry then practised." The husbandry was so imperfect that an unfavourable season for corn-crops, which in our days would have been compensated by a greater production of green crops, was followed by famine. When the ground was too hard, the seed could not be sown for want of the sufficient machine-power of plough and harrow. The chief instrument used was as weak and im 1. The plough. 2. The pole. 1 3 3. The share (various). 4. The handle, or ploughtail. 5. Yokes. perfect as the plough which we see depicted in Egyptian monuments, and which is still found in parts of Syria. The Oriental ploughman was with such an instrument obliged to bend over his plough, and load it with all the weight of his body, to prevent it merely scratching the ground instead of turning it up. His labour was great and his care incessant, as we may judge from the words of our Saviour,-"No man having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God." Latimer, the Protestant martyr, in his 'Sermon of the Plough,' in which he holds that "preaching of the Gospel is one of God's plough-works, and the preacher is one of God's ploughmen," describes the labour upon which he raises his parallel: "For as the ploughman first setteth forth his plough, and then tilleth his land and breaketh it in furrows, and sometimes ridgeth it up again; and at another time harroweth it and clotteth it, and sometimes dungeth it and hedgeth it, diggeth it and weedeth it, purgeth it and maketh it clean,-so the prelate, the preacher, hath many divers offices to do." Latimer was the son of a Leicestershire farmer, and knew practically what he was talking about. He knew that the land would not bear an adequate crop without all this various and often-repeated labour. And yet the labour was so inadequately performed, that a few years after he had preached this famous sermon, we are told by a credible writer of the times of Queen Mary-William Bulleyn, a physician and botanist-that in 1555 "bread was so scant, insomuch that the plain poor people did make very much of acorns.' A few years onward a great impulse was given to husbandry through various causes, amongst which the increased abundance of the precious metals through the opening of the mines of South America had no inconsiderable influence. The industrious spirit of England was fairly roused from a long sleep in the days of Queen Elizabeth. Harrison, in his 'Description of Great Britain,' says, "The soil is even now in these our days grown to be much more fruitful than it hath |