It was proved that Scotch farmers who had farmed highly had weathered the storm. Instead of repeatedly calling on Parliament to help them they had helped themselves, by spending large sums in draining and manuring the land; they had adopted the subsoil plough, and the drainage system of Smith of Deanston, used machinery to economize labour, and improved the breed of stock. This was an object-lesson for the English farmer, and he began to profit by it. It was high time that he did. In spite of the undoubted progress made, farming was still often terribly backward. Little or no machinery was used, implements were often bad, teams too large, drilling little practised, drainage utterly inefficient; in fact, while one farmer used all the improvements made, a hundred had little to do with them. But better times were at hand.
About 1835 Elkington's system of drainage, which among the more advanced agriculturists, at any rate, had been used for half a century, was superseded by that of James Smith of Deanston, a system of thorough drainage and deep ploughing, which effected a complete revolution in the art of draining, and holds the field to-day. Hitherto the draining of land had been done by a few drains where they were thought necessary, which was often a failure. Smith initiated a complete system of parallel underground drains, near enough to each, other to catch all the superfluous water, running into a main drain which ran along the lowest part of the ground. His system has also been called 'furrow or frequent draining', as the drains were generally laid in the furrows from two to two-and-a-half feet deep at short intervals. Even then the tributary drains were at first filled in with stones 12 inches deep, as they had been for centuries, and sometimes with thorns, or even turves, as tiles were still expensive; and the main was made of stonework. However, the invention of machines for making tiles cheapened them, and the substitution of cylindrical pipes for horse-shoe tiles laid on flat soles still further lowered the cost and increased the efficiency.[613] In 1848, Peel introduced Government Drainage Loans, repayable by twenty-two instalments of 6 1/2 per cent. This was consequently an era of extensive drainage works all over England, which sorely needed it; but even now the work was often badly done. In some cases it was the custom for the tenant to put in as many tiles as his landlord gave him, and they were often merely buried. At Stratfieldsaye, for instance, where the Iron Duke was a generous and capable landlord, the drains were sometimes a foot deep, while others were 6 feet deep and 60 feet apart,[614] although the soil required nothing of the kind.