The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1879-12-20 00:00:00

THE ORIGIN OF THE BOARD OF
AGRICULTURE.

The Daily Telegraph (in a leader) remarks :—"On the
15th of May, 1793, a motion was brought forward in
the House of Commons by Sir John Sinclair praying
that an address be presented to the Crown with a
view to the establishment of a Board or Society for
the Encouragement of Agriculture and Internal Im-
provement.' To this address it was natural that
' Farmer George' should lend a willing ear, Above
all other things, the good King prided himself upon the
interest which he took in agriculture. His Majesty
was in the habit of getting up early in the morning
in order to walk about his farm near Windsor Castle.
One day, upon reaching a stile, the King espied
a young country bumpkin, who was seated upon it,
and showed no disposition to move. ' Who are you,
my boy ? ' asked the King. 'I be a pig-boy,' was
the ready answer. For whom do you work?' I
be from the low country, and am out of work.' 'Don't
they want lads here ?" I doan't know,' rejoined
the boy; 'all hereabouts belongs to Georgy." And,
pray,' said his Majesty, who is Georgy ? ' •He
be the .King, and lives up yonder, at the Castle, but
he does no good to me.' His Majesty, says the
memoir writer by whom the tale is told, immediately
gave orders to have the boy employed, and when he
next saw him told him to be a good lad and Georgy '
might do some good for him. Books of anecdote and
gossip exist in abundance which record that the King's
whole heart warmed to a farmer, and that he himself,
under the pseudonym of Ralph Robinson,' con-
tributed seven long letters to a publication called
' Annals of Agriculture '—letters which pointed out
the benefits which such a journal could not fail to
produce, The result of these anonymous letters, in
regard to the authorship of which there seems to have
been little mystery, was that Sir John Sinclair brought
forward his Parliamentary motion for the establishment
of a 'Board of Agriculture.' Supported by a Royal
grant of three thousand pounds annually, the new in-
stitution started upon its way towards the close of
1793, and in a rare and interesting old book, called
The Microcosm of London,' and published in
1810, we find that the King was its patron, Sir John
Sinclair its president, and—what is still more interest-
ing-2-Arthur Young its secretary, As for its official
members, they included most of the high dignitaries in
the kingdom, such as the two English Archbishops,
the Lord Chancellor, most of the Cabinet Ministers,
the Speaker, the President of the Royal Society, and
many more. The ordinary members' were not in a
few cases the ancestors of those noblemen, and country
gentlemen who are now serving on the Council of the
Royal Agricultural Society. The Board of Agriculture
—which soon followed its originators, George 111.,
Sir John Sinclair, and Arthur Young to the grave—
was unquestionably productive of an immense amount
of good. If for no other reason, it deserves honour-
able recollection because it afforded Arthur Young
many opportunities for lecturing and for making
annual reports, and mph another writer and lecturer
upon agriculture England has not hitherto produced.
The accounts of his tours in England, Ireland, and
France may still be read with instruction and inte-
rest, and when he brought his long and honourable
life to a close, it was generally admitted that his place
would not be soon filled." . . ,