THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  ENGLISH  INDUSTBY.        289

The  eighteenth  century,  however,  is  that  in  which  more  than' in'
any  other,  inventiou  or  adaptation  made  rapid  progress.  Its
beginning  is  marked  by  the  aoeeptanoe  of  the  new  agriculture,  a
subject  on  which  I  have  frequently  commented,  and  at  some
length,  for  it  is  one  of  the  most  interesting  and  instructive  facts  in
economical  history.  But  it  was  not  as  a  discovery  original.  The
new  agriculture  had  been  practised  for  a  century  in  Holland  and
Flanders.  Its  success  is  constantly  commented  on  by  agricultural
writers  of  the  seventeenth  century,  who  are  never  tired  of  re-
proaching the  English  with  "their  slothful  and  backward  agri-
culture, and  I  am  forced  to  say,  of  giving  distasteful  reasons  for  the
fact.  We  are  told  by  these  writers,  that  all  the  choicer  vegetables,
common  enough  as  we  should  think  them  now,  came  from  Holland,
and  that  a  gentleman's  or  farmer's  garden,  let  alone  his  fields,  did
»,ot  supply  him  with  the  commonest.  They  tell  us  also,  how,  in
Brabant,  to  use  Arthur  Young's  phrase,  sand  had  been  turned  into
gold,  by  liberal  and  just  covenants  between  landlord  and  tenant,
and  by  securing  to  the  tenants  the  bond  fide  improvements  which
they  had  made.  Among  the  many  benefits  which  Holland  has
conferred  on  civilization,  that  of  improved  agriculture  is  not  the
least.  Perhaps  in  time  to  come,  and  ere  it  be  too  late,  we  may
take  another  lesson  from  Holland,  and  copy  her  land  system.  If
we  do,  I  can  confidently  promise  the  landowner  in  the  United
Kingdom  a  return  to  at  least  a  large  cantle  of  his  old  prosperity.
But  as  I  have  been  often  obliged  to  affirm,  the  two  greatest
obstacles  to  human  progress  are  the  prejudice  of  ignorance  and  tha
bigotry  of  science.
