He began at the time when it was daily announced that old-fashioned farming was a thing of the past.
Business maxims and business practice were to be the rule of the future.
Farming was not to be farming; it was to be emphatically 'business,' the same as iron, coal, or cotton.

Thus managed, with steam as the motive power, a fortune might be made out of the land, in the same way as out of a colliery or a mine.

But it must be done in a commercial manner; there must be no restrictions upon the employment of capital, no fixed rotation of crops, no clauses forbidding the sale of any products.

Cecil found, however, that the possessors of large estates would not let him a farm on these conditions.

These ignorant people (as he thought them) insisted upon keeping up the traditionary customs; they would not contract themselves out of the ancient form of lease.
But Cecil was a man of capital.