rit of improvement might be encouraged, which would result in
important national benefits.

The motion was carried by 101 to 26. By its charter the board
consisted of a president, 16 ex-officio and 30 ordinary members, with
honorary and corresponding members. It was not a Government department
in the modern sense of the term, but a society for the encouragement
of agriculture, as the Royal Society is for the encouragement of
science. It was, indeed, supported by parliamentary grants, receiving
a sum of L3,000 a year, but the Government had only a limited control
over its affairs through the ex-officio members, among whom were the
Archbishops of Canterbury and York, the Lord Chancellor, the First
Lord of the Admiralty, and the Speaker.

The first president was Sir John Sinclair, and the first secretary
Arthur Young, with a salary of L400 a year, which he thought
insufficient.[505] The first task of the new board was that of
preparing statistical accounts of English agriculture, and it was
intended to take in hand the commutation of tithes, which would have
been a great boon to farmers, with whom the prevailing system of
collecting tithes was very unpopular; but the Primate's opposition
stopped this. The board appointed lecturers, procured a reward for
Elkington for his draining system, encouraged Macadam in his plans for
improving roads, and Meikle the inventor of the thrashing machine, and
obtained the removal of taxes on draining tiles, and other taxes
injurious to agriculture. It also recommended the allotment system,
and Sinclair desired 3 acres and a cow for every industrious cottager.
During the abnormally high prices of provisions from 1794-6, the
quartern loaf in London in 1795 being 1s. 6d., though next year it
dropped to 7-3/4d.,[506] the board made experiments in making bread
with substitutes for wheat, which resulted in a public exhibition of
eighty different sorts of bread. Its efforts were generally followed
by increased zeal among agriculturists; but Sinclair, an able but
impetuous man,[507] appears to have taken things too much into his own
hands and pushed them too speedily.

Financial difficulties came, chiefly owing to the cost of the surveys,
which had been hurried on with undue haste and often with great
carelessness, the surveyors sometimes being men who knew nothing of
the subject.

Sinclair was deposed from the presidency in 1798, and succeeded by
Lord Somerville. He again was succeeded by Lo