Into this universal whirl of activity everything was drawn.  Agriculture made a corresponding advance.  Not only did landed property pass, as we have already seen, into the hands of new owners and cultivators, agriculture was affected in still another way.  The great holders applied capital to the improvement of the soil, tore down needless fences, drained, manured, employed better tools, and applied a rotation of crops.  The progress of science came to their assistance also; Sir Humphrey Davy applied chemistry to agriculture with success, and the development of mechanical science bestowed a multitude of advantages upon the large farmer.  Further, in consequence of the increase of population, the demand for agricultural products increased in such measure that from 1760 to 1834, 6,840,540 acres of waste land were reclaimed; and, in spite of this, England was transformed from a grain exporting to a grain importing country.

The same activity was developed in the establishment of communication.  From 1818 to 1829, there were built in England and Wales, 1,000 English miles of roadway of the width prescribed by law, 60 feet, and nearly all the old roads were reconstructed on the new system of M’Adam.  In Scotland, the Department of Public Works built since 1803 nearly 900 miles of roadway and more than 1,000 bridges, by which the population of the Highlands was suddenly placed within reach of civilisation.  The Highlanders had hitherto been chiefly poachers and smugglers; they now became farmers and hand-workers.  And, though Gaelic schools were organised for the purpose of maintaining the Gaelic language, yet Gaelic-Celtic customs and speech are rapidly vanishing before the approach of English civilisation.  So, too, in Ireland; between the counties of Cork, Limerick, and Kerry, lay hitherto a wilderness wholly without passable roads, and serving, by reason of its inaccessibility, as the refuge of all criminals and the chief protection of the Celtic Irish nationality in the South of Ireland.  It has now been cut through by public roads, and civilisation has thus gained admission even to this savage region.  The whole British Empire, and especially England, which, sixty years ago, had as bad roads as Germany or France then had, is now covered by a network of the finest roadways; and these, too, like almost everything else in England, are the work of private enterprise, the State having done very little in this direction.

Before 1755 England possessed almost no canals.  In that year a canal was built in Lancashire from Sankey Brook to St Helen’s; and in 1759, James Brindley built the first important one, the Duke of Bridgewater’s canal from Manchester, and the coal mines of the district to the mouth of the Mersey passing, near Barton, by aqueduct, over the river Irwell.  From this achievement dates the canal building of England, to which Brindley first gave importance.  Canals were now built, and rivers made navigable in all directions.  In England alone, there are 2,200 miles of canals and 1,800 miles of navigable river.  In Scotland, the Caledonian Canal was cut directly across the country, and in Ireland several canals were built.  These improvements, too, like the railroads and roadways, are nearly all the work of private individuals and companies.