OF AGRICULTURE.--THE ROYAL AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY.--CORN LAW
REPEAL.--A TEMPORARY SET-BACK.--THE HALCYON DAYS

The revival of agriculture roughly coincided with the accession of
Queen Victoria.

It was proved that Scotch farmers who had farmed highly had weathered
the storm. Instead of repeatedly calling on Parliament to help them
they had helped themselves, by spending large sums in draining and
manuring the land; they had adopted the subsoil plough, and the
drainage system of Smith of Deanston, used machinery to economize
labour, and improved the breed of stock. This was an object-lesson
for the English farmer, and he began to profit by it. It was high
time that he did. In spite of the undoubted progress made, farming
was still often terribly backward. Little or no machinery was used,
implements were often bad, teams too large, drilling little
practised, drainage utterly inefficient; in fact, while one farmer
used all the improvements made, a hundred had little to do with them.
But better times were at hand.

About 1835 Elkington's system of drainage, which among the more
advanced agriculturists, at any rate, had been used for half a
century, was superseded by that of James Smith of Deanston, a system
of thorough drainage and deep ploughing, which effected a complete
revolution in the art of draining, and holds the field to-day.
Hitherto the draining of land had been done by a few drains where they
were thought necessary, which was often a failure. Smith initiated a
complete system of parallel underground drains, near enough to each,
other to catch all the superfluous water, running into a main drain
which ran along the lowest part of the ground. His system has also
been called 'furrow or frequent draining', as the drains were
generally laid in the furrows from two to two-and-a-half feet deep at
short intervals. Even then the tributary drains were at first filled
in with stones 12 inches deep, as they had been for centuries, and
sometimes with thorns, or even turves, as tiles were still expensive;
and the main was made of stonework. However, the invention of machines
for making tiles cheapened them, and the substitution of cylindrical
pipes for horse-shoe tiles laid on flat soles still further lowered
the cost and increased the efficiency.[613] In 1848, Peel introduced
Government Drainage Loans, repayable by twenty-two instalments of 6
1/2 per cent. This was consequently an era of extensive drainage works
all ove