Clyde, from Glasgow to Dunbarton, "groves and meadows and corn fields interspersed," delight his eye. The banks of Loch Lomond "display a sweet variety of woodland, corn field, and pasture." His own "Leven Water" was "pastoral and delightful' then, as it still remains. He goes to Inverary. In Argyleshire he sees "hardly any signs of cultivation, or even of population;" but "a margin of plain ground, spread along the sea-side, is well inhabited, and improved by the arts of husbandry." Of this vast Highland district it is now computed that more than three hundred thousand acres are cultivated. But eighty years ago, to speak of the cultivation of the Highlands would be to describe a region in which agriculture was despised; where the mountaineers chiefly confided in the spontaneous bounty of nature, which gave them fish in the streams, and fowl in the heather, and rare patches of pasture for a few black cattle. Smollett says that "the granaries of Scotland are the banks of the Tweed, the counties of East and Mid Lothian, the Carse of Gowrie, and some tracts in Aberdeenshire and Moray." The Carse of Gowrie maintains its ancient réputation as the garden of Scotland." But other parts of Perthshire have witnessed great changes. The graziers of the lowland districts no longer quit their little farms to drive their cattle to shealings, on the bills to graze during the summer, the men fishing and hunting whilst the women tend the cows and spin.* The Highlanders no longer come down to the cattle markets at Crieff, and take unceremonious possession of the fire-sides and beds of the country people. The tenantry of certain districts are no longer compelled, as one of the modes of feudal slavery, to grind their corn at the lord's mill and shoe their horses at the lord's 1 forge. T e whole system of cultivation in parts of Perthshire may be taken as a fair sample of the mode in which the cultivation (of a la rge portion of Scotland was proceeding long after the middle of t1 e last century. The farms lay in what was termed "ruprig," nsisting of "infield," upon which all the manure was laid, and "outfield," occasionally cropped, and then consigned to common pasture, if any feed could be got off it. There was no wheat, or artificial grass, or potatoes, or winter turnips. There were no separate farms; the cultivators lived in hamlets, upon the ancient principle of mutual protection. Tully Veolan exhibits a lively picture of such a hamlet-the garden where the gigantic kale was encircled by groves of nettles; the common field where the joint labour of the villagers cultivated alternate ridges and patches of rye, oats, barley, and peas; the miserable wigwam behind some ↑ Ibid., p. 270. "New Statistical Account," vol, x. Perth, p. 556. AGRICULTURAL STATE OF IRELAND. 1 337 favoured cottage, where the wealthy might perhaps shelter a starved cow or sorely-galled horse; the stack of turf on one side the door, and the family dunghill on the other.* In such a village, handlabour did more than the plough; but when that cumbrous instrument was used, it barely scratched the soil, without turning it over. Sledges were employed instead of carts. It is unnecessary to point out the contrast of a period half a century later; especially in the more remote districts of the North of Scotland, in which the country has been made accessible by roads, water communication, and railways, and its cultivation has no longer to struggle with other impediments than those of soil and climate. The climate itself has been ameliorated by judicious planting. Johnson was abused for dwelling on the bareness of the country, Fife in particular, through which he passed in his "Journey." Boswell, in defending him, says, "let any traveller observe how many trees, which deserve the name, he can see from Berwick to Aberdeen.". There is now scarcely a parish in Fifeshire, described in the "New Statistical Account," in which there is not mention of extensive plantations which, “instead of presenting to the eye a naked and barren land scape, enliven with verdure our higher grounds." At Inverary there are noble trees, planted in 1746 by Archibald, duke of Argyle ; the plantations were extended in 1771; but within the last quarter of a century plantation has gone on at the rate of half a million of oak and fir trees in five years. In an interesting paper upon Moray it is truly said, with reference to cultivation, "The change which a single century has wrought in Northern Scotland can hardly be exaggerated." The remarkable powers of observation possessed by Arthur Young are signally displayed in his "Tour in Ireland," made in the years 1776 to 1779. In 1779 lord North saw the necessity of yielding to the national spirit which Grattan had evoked, and he carried three Bills for the relief of the commerce of Ireland.§ The tillage and grazing of that country had been long impeded by prohibitory laws, which prevented the importation of black cattle to England, and which discountenanced the woollen manufacture. and consequently discouraged the breeding of sheep. The monopolizing spirit of jobbery went so far in 1759, that a Bill of the Irish Parliament for restricting the importation into Ireland of damaged flour was thrown out in England, at the instigation of a miller of Chichester. The natural fertility of Ireland, and her consequent "Waverley."New Statistical Account, vol. vii. Argyleshire, p. 14. advantages in carrying her agriculture to perfection, are shown by Arthur Young to be very great-a fertility superior to that of England, taking acre for acre. But the capital and skill that had made England what it was, even eighty years ago, were wanting in Ireland. Amongst the greatest evils were the "middlemen." "The very idea," says Young, as well as the practice, of permitting a tenant to relet at a profit rent, seems confined to the distant and unimproved parts of every empire." It had entirely gone out in the highly cultivated counties of England; in Scotland it had continued to be very common. The class of Irish middlemen has been familiarized to us by the admirable pictures of Maria Edgeworth. Young describes them as screwing up the rent to the uttermost farthing, and relentless in the collection of it-the hardest drinkers in Ireland-masters of packs of wretched hounds, with which they wasted their time and their money. But whether the tenantry of Ireland were miserable cottars, or "the largest graziers and cow-keepers in the world," all were "the most errant slovens." In the arable counties the capital employed upon a given amount of land would not be a third of that of an English farmer; hence "their manuring is trivial, their tackle and implements wretched, their teams weak, their profits small." Wonderful as it may appear, the "barbarous custom" denounced by the statute of the 10th and 11th of Charles II., of ploughing, harrowing, drawing, and working with horses, by the tail, was not exploded at Castlebar and other places. In the mountainous tracts Arthur Young saw instances of greater industry than in any other part of Ireland; for the little occupiers, who could obtain leases of a mountain side, made exertions in improvement. The cottar system of labour resembled what had then recently prevailed in Scotland, and which was probably the same all over Europe before arts and commerce changed the face of it. "The recompense for labour is the means of living. In England these are dispensed in money, but in Ireland in land or commodities." The shrewd agricultural observer weighs the comparative advantages for the poor family, of payment in land, to produce potatoes and milk, or of a money payment. He seems to decide for the plentiful supply of food, although the mud hovel of one room may blind the family with its smoke, and the clothing be so ragged that a stranger is impressed with the idea of universal poverty. "The sparingness with which our English labourer eats his bread and cheese is well known. Mark the Irishman's potatoe-bowl placed on the floor, the whole family on their hams around it, devouring a quantity almost incredible; the beggar Young-"Tour in Ireland," vol. ii. p. 329 THE POTATO CULTIVATION. 339 seating himself to it with a hearty welcome, the pig taking his share as readily as the wife, the cocks, hens, turkeys, geese, the cur, the cat,—and all partaking of the same dish.” * We now know what was the terrible end of this rude abundance of one species of food, produced upon small holdings, of which, in 1847, 500,000 acres maintained 300,000 families; whilst in England one labourer was employed to about fifteen acres of arable land. The abuse of the right of property in land; which went on for more than half a century, in allowing the landlords to consume the whole produce of the soil minus the potatoes,† resulted in that visitation which was regarded by the Society of Friends in Ireland as "a means permitted by an all-wise Providence to exhibit more strikingly the unsound state of our social condition." Arthur Young did not anticipate the frightful climax of the almost exclusive potato cultivation. He saw a population under three millions. He could not anticipate what would be the result, when that population was more than doubled, without an adequate improvement in the cultivation of the land, and a more equal distribution of its produce amongst the great body of the miserable cultivators. Tour in Ireland," vol. ii. p. 118. CHAPTER XIX. Revolution in the peaceful Arts.-Great captains of Industry raised up in Britain.-The. duke of Bridgewater and Brindley.-Canals first constructed in England.-The Cotton manufacture.-The fly-shuttle of Kay.-Cotton-spinning machines.-The spinning-jenny of Hargreaves.-Cotton spinning ceasing to be a domestic employ ment. Richard Arkwright.--His water-frame spinning machine.-The first water spinning mill.-Samuel Crompton.-His Hall-in-the-Wood wheel, known as the mule -General rush to engage in spinning cotton.-Rapid increase of Lancashire towns.— Dr. Cartwright. His power-loom. Dr. Roebuck.-First furnace at Carron for smelting iron by pit-coal.-Wedgwood.-Potteries of Staffordshire.-Commercial treaty with France.-Watt.-Progress of his improved steam-engine.-Its final suc cess. IN the last year of the reign of George the Second, and in a few years after the accession of George the Third, there was begun in this country an enormous revolution in the Arts, for accomplishing which Providence raised up very special instruments. The great designs of Superior Beneficence may be as readily traced in the formation of .minds which are destined to effect mighty changes in social organization by what may seem humble labours, as in the permission given to iawgivers and warriors to operate upon the destinies of nations by more direct exercises of power. The revolution in the peaceful Arts in the middle of the eighteenth century in Britain, which was commenced and carried forward in various directions by a knot of men not greater in number than the mythical Seven Champions of Christendom, exhibited an unequalled series of bloodless triumphs over physical and moral obstacles, and produced immediate and still developing results, which have raised this little band to the unquestioned honour of being the great Captains and Champions of Modern Industry. During less than half a century, the labours of these men had increased the resources of their country to an extent which chiefly enabled it to sustain the pressure of the most tremendous war in which it ever was engaged; had bestowed upon a population increasing beyond all previous example abundant opportunities of profitable labour; and had opened new and unlimited fields of production, for the multiplication and diffusion of the necessaries of life and of the comforts and refinements of civiliza tion. Whilst tracing the individual course of these remarkable contemporaries, we cannot fail to perceive what an intimate con |