AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION THE, a cating that period in history which witnessed the transition of English methods of farming from mediaeval to modern conditions. During the r8th century increasing knowledge and new inventions revolutionized both agriculture and stockbreeding. At the same time the rapid growth of enclosures vastly improved the conditions under which farming was carried on. But it increased the resources of the great landowner to the extinction of the yeoman farmer, and thus an essentially progressive movement in agriculture brought much misery in its train. The expenses incurred by the enclosure movement, the subsequent rise in the value of land, reductions in agricultural establishments, the protective system of the corn laws, and the supplementing of wages from the rates (Speenhamland system [q.v.] 1795) raised prices, lowered wages and depressed a large section of the agricultural population to the level of paupers. (Cf. INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION.) See also AGRICULTURE ; COMMONS ; CORN LAWS.