But, on the other hand, it lias been urged, that the practice of husbandry ought not to be included in then deliberations; and that every thing of that kind lira) safely be left to professional people, who are morally and physically better qualified to investigate and aseet tain what is right to be executed. It has been Furth, urged, that when a Board of Trade acted in this coun try, its measui es were confined to the great and objects of commerce, without descending to minutia., or interfering with the business of individuals. In short, it has been supposed almost as preposterous for thy Board of Agriculture to meddle with ploughing, sow.m.,, planting potatoes, building cottages, Lee. lxc. as it woul,i have been for the Board of Trade to issue directions to apprentices concerning the best way of folding and ty ing parcels. Though inclined to think that there is some weight in the arguments urged, we adhere to opinion already given, that much good has been done by the Board, and that a great deal more may still h.• accomplished. The scantiness of their funds, however, is a reproach to the nation, and calls loudly for additional aid to such a meritorious establishment. If the gene rous spirit which animated the Persian kings had per vaded our rulers, when the Board was established, or even had the latter estimated agriculture as of the same value as it was appreciated by the former, a complain'_ of this kind would have been superfluous. At the an nual festival in April each year, in honour of agriculture, the Persian king was in use to address the farmers to the following effect: "I am one of you. My subsistence, and that of my people, rests on the labour of your hands; the succession of the race of man depends on the plough, and without you we cannot exist. But your dependence upon me is reciprocal. Wc ought therefore to be bro thers, and live in perpetual harmony." We now come to this northern part of the island, where husbandry was long unknown, and still longer im perfectly exercised. There is sufficient evidence, that husbandry was introduced into Britain at the south-east corner, and travelled, by slow and gradual steps, to other quarters ; but it is difficult to trace the progress of the art, or to discover how far it had advanced when this island was evacuated by the Romans. When Seve rus invaded Scotland, A. D. 207, we are told "that the Macau and Caledonians, who possessed all the island beyond Hadrian's Wall, inhabited barren uncultivated mountains, or desert marshy plains ; that they had nei ther towns nor cultivated lands, but lived on the milk and flesh of their flocks and herds, on what they got by plunder, or catched by hunting, and on the fruit of trees." These barbarous nations, however, being obliged by Severus to yield up a part of their country to the Ro mans, that industrious people, in the course of the third century, built several towns and stations, constructed highways, cut down woods, drained marshes, and intro duced agriculture into the districts south of the Frith of Forth, which are generally well calculated for tillage. Though the Romans never formed any lasting station north of the Forth, yet many of them and of the provin cial Britons, retired into Caledonia at different times, particularly about the end of the third century, to escape from the Dioclesian persecution. It is probable these refugees instructed the natives; and as the eastern coast of Caledonia was also well adapted for cultivation, there is little doubt but that the Pictish nation, who inhabited it, were early initiated into the art of agriculture. Even the Caledonians of the west, who in the fourth century began to be called Scots, were not altogether ignorant of husbandry in this period ; for St Jerom reproaches Ce lestius, who was a Scotchman, "That his belly was swelled or distended with Scots pottage, or hasty-pud ding." This is at least a proof, that, in the beginning of the fifth century, the Scots, or western Caledonians, lived partly on oat-meal, a kind of loud to which they had been absolute strangers about two hundred years before, when invaded by the emperor Severus.
Till the reign of Malcolm Canmore, in the eleventh century, the progress of husbandry was very slow ; but during his reign, a greater degree of attention was paid to the cultivation of the country. This increased atten
tion arose from the number of Anglo-Saxons who mi grated at that time into Scotland, by whose endeavours the face of the country was changed from that of a bar ren wilderness, to that of a well regulated and cultivated territory. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the lowlands of Scotland were improved considerably, and their inhabitants were prosperous and happy. As a proof of their internal prosperity, it was in these cen turies that all the religious houses were erected ; and it is plain, that before any nation can be munificently pious, it must be flourishing and rich. In these periods the greatest part of our modern towns and villages were also built ; and it was then that the people began to be civilized, and society to assume something of its present shape. Circumstances, however, soon occurred, which blasted, and in a manner destroyed, all these fair pros pects ; and Scotland, from continuing flourishing and prosperous, was so completely wasted by civil broils and foreign wars, that the efforts of the people, during the four succeeding centuries, were scarcely sufficient to restore matters to their former footing.
These civil broils originated in a contested succession to the crown, wherein the parties in the first instance were nearly matched ; but afterwards, by the interference of Edward of England, the scale was turned, and, as generally happens in such cases, the country was brought under the dominion of a foreign invader. The death of Alexander III. in 1286, was the source of all these evils. It occasioned a contest concerning the succession be tween John Baliol and Robert Bruce, which almost ruined Scotland, and ultimately brought destruction upon the followers of Baliol, and those who adhered to Edward of England, who claimed the sovereignty as lord paramount of the country. This contest, which lasted for many years, stopped the growing prosperity of the country, occasioned the towns and villages to be de stroyed, turned the people's attention from internal im provement to resisting external attacks, and rendered them as barbarous and uncivilized, as they were before the days of Malcolm Canmore. The baneful conse quences which flowed from a disputed succession, were hardly overcome, when England and Scotland were united under the government of one sovereign; nor did they altogether disappear till the middle of the 18th cen tury. Before that time the internal improvement of the country was neglected and overlooked, whilst the great bulk of the inhabitants continued in an abject and mise !'oble state. imperfectly fed, destitute of other comforts, withoat the means of improvement, and altogether in a situation which can hardly be described even at the pre sent moment, when all these circumstances arc complete ly reversed.
Without insisting upon these points, it may only be ad ded, that the large armies brought into the field by the partisans of Baliol and Bruce, chiefly drawn from the low-country districts, furnish incontestable proof, that the population of the country was at that time numerous. Now, as population and food must always go hand in hand, or, speaking inure correctly, food must always precede population ; a sure evidence of agricultural pros perity at the end of the 13th century is thence furnished. Indeed, independent of abstract reasoning, we have con clusive proof of the flourishing state of agriculture in Scotland from other sources. According to Heming ford, a writer of no mean authority, it appears that the English army, when besieging the castle of Dirleton, in East Lothian, A. D. 1299, subsisted upon the pease and beans growing in the adjoining fields. Every agricul turist knows well, that these grains cannot be success fully cultivated, till husbandry has reached a pretty ad vanced state; and therefore it may be presumed, that the agriculture of the district alluded to, was at that period very much improved. But another circumstance, still more decisive, may he gleaned from the wardrobe ac count of Edward I. ; wherein it appears, that when that monarch invaded Galloway in 1300, he purchased and exported from Kirkcudbright to \Vhitehaven, and other parts of Cumberland, greater quantities of wheat than perhaps the modern agriculture of that province could supply at the present clay.