That English farming was the best in the world, all the world ...

That English farming was the best in the world, all the world acknowledged. It had to be, because, as the saying went, with wheat at fifty shillings it only began to pay after a crop of twenty-eight bushels to the acre

had been got.

One might, perhaps, say further, that a wealthy landowner, understanding the economics of agriculture, a farmer master of its practice, a village not over populated, with pure water, decent houses, allotments, and a school, made up the most successful experiment in social organization that England had so far seen. There were, it is true, many points at which the experiment might go wrong.

The landlord might be encumbered: the rain unseasonable. 'Is there anything about the weather in your rules?' a farmer once asked his Union men.

But so long as prices kept up, a new landlord or a good harvest might put all right again. In the war year, wheat was at £1745. After 1877 it never touched 500 again;' in 1884 it dipped below £150; in 1894 it was at £1225, and the harvest of that

year of panic sold at £1200. The grazing

counties stood the storm best.

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