The  consequence  of  agricultvral  success — The  DuTce  of  Argyll's
illustration  of  rent — The  history  of  progress — The  errors  of
theory — The  history  of  agricuUwral  prodMce — The  accuracy  of
ancient  accounts — Gregory  King's  lam  of  prices — English  famines —
Agricultwre  in  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries — The
survey  of  Gamlinyay — Common  fields — Pasture — Commons —
The  regular  clergy  and  agriculture — Primogenitmre — The  land
and  stocTc  lease — Development  of  new  tenancies,  term^  of  yea/rs,
life,  and  on  rack-rent.
The  development  and  progress  of  agricoltnre  is  the  first  and
most  convincing  proof  that  a  particnlar  race  can  rise  above
barbarism.  It  is  true  that  the  practice  of  agriculture  is  com-
patible with  and  may  be  characteristic  of  an  unprogressive  stage,
one  in  which  civilization  is  early  and  strangely  arrested.  But  such
an  arrested  growth  can  almost  always  be  explained  by  the  presence
of  definite  causes,  which  it  costs  the  publicist  little  trouble  to
detect  and  expound.
1.  The  success  of  agriculture  measures  the  numbers  of  any
given  community  who,  in  the  absence  of  foreign  importation,  can
be  maintained  on  the  soil.  When  foreign  importation  is  free  and
copious,  the  whole  trading  world  must  be  taken  as  one  community,
and  the  rule  will  be  found  to  apply  with  equal  accuracy.  We  in
England  do  not  produce,  perhaps  could  not  produce  enough  food


THE  CONSEQUENCE  QF  AGBICULTUBAL  SUCCESS.     47

from  the;  land,  wkerewith  to  feed  all  its  inhabitants,  though  this
inability,  for  reasons  which  will  be  given  further  on,  is  disputable.
