CHAPTER XIV. THE RURAL POPULATION. 1780-1813. Effect of enclosures on the rural population; no necessary reduction in the number of small owners, but rather an increase; consolidation of farms, either by purchase from small owners, or by throwing tenancies together; the strict letter of the law; small occupiers become landless labourers; depopulation of villages when tillage was abandoned for pasture; scarcity of employment in open-field villages; the literary controversy; the material injury inflicted upon the rural poor by the loss of the commons; no possible equivalent in cash-value: the moral injury; the simultaneous decay of domestic industries; the rapid rise after 1790 in the price of provisions; a substantial advance in agricultural wages. DURING the thirty-three years from 1780 to 1813, the industrial revolution, which in agriculture was expressed by the new methods and spirit of farming, influenced rural life in two opposite directions. Far-reaching changes were made which were justified, and even demanded, by national exigencies. As, in trade, the capitalist manufacturer displaced the small master-workman and domestic craftsman, so, in agriculture, land was thrown together in large holdings at the expense of small occupiers. Both manufacture and agriculture became businesses which required the possession of capital. Without money, workers, whether in trade or on land, lost the prospect of themselves becoming masters or employers. But the same changes which brought unexampled prosperity to landowners and large tenant-farmers, combined with other causes to plunge the rest of the rural population into almost unparalleled misery. The rapid growth of manufacturing towns created a new demand for bread and meat; it raised the rents of landowners; it swelled the profits of farmers. For a long series of years the war, by practically excluding foreign corn, maintained a high level of agricultural prices in spite of increased production. But to labourers who neither owned nor occupied land, the rise of prices brought no compensating advantages. On the AN AGRARIAN REVOLUTION 291 contrary, they paid more dearly for all necessaries of subsistence, and the increased cost of living was not adequately met by a corresponding rise in wages. At the same time, the steps which were required for the adoption of those agricultural improvements, by which the manufacturing industries as well as large owners and occupiers of land were profiting, multiplied the numbers and increased the sufferings of landless labourers. The extinction of open-field farms reduced numbers of small occupiers to the rank of hired wageearners; the appropriation of commons deprived many cottagers, not only of free fuel, but of the means of supplementing wages by the profits of their live-stock, their poultry, and their geese. In the eighteenth as in the sixteenth century it was still partially true that "enclosures make fat beasts and lean poor people." The structure of rural society was affected to its very foundations by the agrarian revolution which was in progress. A great population, standing on the verge of famine, and beginning to gather in industrial centres, cried aloud for food. Technical improvements in farming had been tested, which promised to supply the new demand for bread and meat, if only free play were allowed to the modern methods of production. It was from this point of view that agricultural experts, almost to a man, were unanimous in requiring the removal of mediaeval obstacles to progress, and the addition of every possible acre to the cultivated area. As open-field arable farms were broken up, as pasture-commons were divided, as wastes were brought into cultivation, the face of the country altered. The enclosing movement was attacked on various grounds. To its effects were attributed the disappearance of the yeomanry, using the words in the strict sense of farmer-owners; the monopoly of farms, or, in other words, the consolidation of a number of holdings into single occupations; the depopulation of rural villages; the material and moral loss which was alleged to be inflicted on the poor. Round these different points raged the contest of the latter half of the eighteenth century. Meanwhile the work of enclosure went on without interruption. At the present day the changes seem to have been surprisingly rapid; but to men who were living under the stress of war and scarcity, they appeared almost criminally slow. They so appeared to William Marshall, perhaps the most experienced and the least bigoted of the agricultural observers of the day. Writing in 1801, before the full pressure of famine prices had been felt, he says: Through the uncertainty and expense attending private 66 acts, a great portion of the unstinted common lands remain nearly as nature left them; appearing in the present state of civilisation and science, as filthy blotches on the face of the country; especially when seen under the threatening clouds of famine which have now repeatedly overspread it." 1 It does not appear that the necessary result of the enclosing movement was to diminish the number of occupying owners. On the contrary, the first effect of an enclosure was to increase the freeholders, since rights of open arable field occupation and of pasture common were often replaced by allotments of land in separate ownership. After 1689, the decline in the number of owners of small estates begins to be noted by contemporary writers.2 "At the Revolution," says a "Suffolk Gentleman," "there existed a race of Men in the Country besides the Gentlemen and Husbandmen, called Yeomanry, Men who cultivated their own property, consisting chiefly of farms from forty to fourscore pounds a year. . . the Pride of the Nation in War and Peace. . . hardy, brave, and of good morals." Their alleged disappearance can only have been remotely due to enclosure, if, as the "Suffolk Gentleman" says, "by the influx of riches and a change of manners, they were nearly annihilated in the year 1750." On the other hand, a considerable body of evidence exists to show that, after the accession of George III., a reaction had set in, and that small owners were not only numerous, but actually increasing in numbers. Thus Marshall, writing in 1790 of small freeholders both in Yorkshire (Vale of Pickering) and in Leicestershire, says: "Some years back, the same species of frenzy,-Terramania-showed itself here, as it did in other districts. Forty years purchase was, then, not unfrequently given." The Reports to the Board of Agriculture (1793-1815) show that in many parts of the country small owners not only held their ground, but once more were buying land. Thus of the northeastern counties generally, Young 5 states that "farmers have been very considerable purchasers of land." Norfolk (1804) is said to 1 The Appropriation and Inclosure of Commonable and Intermixed Lands (1801). Authorities are quoted in The Disappearance of the Small Landowner, by the Rev. A. H. Johnson (1909), pp. 136-8. Letter to Sir T. C. Bunbury, Bart., on the Poor Rates and the High Price of Provisions (1795). • Rural Economy of the Midland Counties, vol. i. p. 16. * Young's Hertfordshire (1804), p. 18. OCCUPYING OWNERS 293 contain estates of all sizes, from nearly the largest scale to the little freehold; one of £25,000 a year; one of £14,000; one of £13,000; two of £10,000; many of about £5,000; and an increasing number of all smaller proportions."1 In Suffolk (1797) "the rich yeomanry are described as very numerous . . . farmers occupying their own lands, of a value rising from £100 to £400 a year."2 In Essex (1807), "there never was a greater proportion of small and moderatesized farms, the property of mere farmers, who retain them in their own immediate occupation, than at present. Such has been the flourishing state of agriculture for twenty or thirty years past, that scarcely an estate is sold, if divided into lots of forty or fifty to two or three hundred a year, but is purchased by farmers. . . . Hence arises a fair prospect of landed property gradually returning to a situation of similar possession to what it was a hundred or a hundred and fifty years ago, when our inferior gentry resided upon their estates in the country." 66 4 66 66 In the South-Eastern and East Midland counties, no marked decrease in the number of small estates is noticed. One third " of Berkshire is said to have been occupied in 1813 by the proprietors of the soil. Owners of landed property from £200 to £600 a year were very numerous." Oxfordshire (1794) contained many proprietors of a middling size, and many small proprietors, particularly in the open fields." 5 In Nottinghamshire (1798) some considerable, as well as inferior yeomen occupy their own lands." 6 Of late years in Hampshire (1813) "a considerable subdivision of property has taken place." Speaking of the farmers on the chalk hills of the county, the Reporter says that "many of them are the possessors of small estates which their thrifty management keeps upon the increase.” 7 In Kent, up to at least 1793, the number of owners of land seemed annually on the increase, "by the estates which are divided and sold to the occupiers. There is no description of persons who can afford to give so much money for the purchase of an estate as those who buy for their own occupation. Many in the eastern part of this county have been sold, within these few years, for forty, and some for fifty years purchase, and upwards." 8 1 Young's Norfolk (1804), p. 17. 2 Young's Suffolk (1797), p. 8. 40. 5 Davis' Oxfordshire (1794), p. 11. "Vancouver's Hampshire (1813), pp. 51, 80. 8 Boys' Kent (1796), p. 26. In the West Midland and South-Western district, small owners were at least holding their own. In North Wilts (1794), where a considerable number of enclosures had been made, a great deal of the property has been divided and sub-divided, and gone into the hands of the many."1 Brent Marsh in Somersetshire (1797) was a district of 20,000 acres which the stagnant waters rendered unwholesome to man and beast. Within the last twenty years much of this land had been enclosed and drained under a variety of Acts of Parliament. "Scarcely a farmer," says the Reporter, "can now be found who does not possess a considerable landed property; and many, whose fathers lived in idleness and sloth, on the precarious support of a few half-starved cows, or a few limping geese, are now in affluence, and blessed with every needful species of enjoyment." 2 Devonshire (1794) continued to be a county of small properties.3 In Gloucestershire (1807)," the number of yeomen who possess freeholds, of various value, is great, as appears from the Sheriff's return of the poll at the election for a county member in 1776, when 5790 freeholders voted, and the number since that period is much increased."4 Landed property in Shropshire (1803) is "considerably divided. . . . The number of gentlemen of small fortune living on their estates, has decreased; their descendants have been clergymen or attornies, either in the country, or shopkeepers in the towns of their own county; or more probably in this county emigrated to Birmingham, Liverpool, to Manchester, or to London; but then the opulent farmer, who has purchased the farm he lives upon. . . is a character that has increased." 5 The North and North-Western districts afford similar evidence, though in two counties a decrease is conspicuous. In Staffordshire (1813) the best and most improving farmers were "the proprietors of 200 or 300 acres of land, who farm it themselves." 6 "6 Derbyshire (1794) possessed numerous small occupiers, who eked out the profits of the land by mining, spinning, and weaving; but there were also occupiers of another description, "very properly styled yeomen; men cultivating their own estates with a sufficient capital."7 In Cheshire (1808) "the number of small land-owners is not apparently less than in other counties. The description of this latter class has, 1 Davis' Wiltshire (1794), p. 8. 2Billingsley's Somersetshire (1797), pp. 166-73. 3 Fraser's Devonshire (1794), p. 17. 4 Rudge's Gloucestershire (1807), p. 34. 'Plymley's Shropshire (1803), p. 90. Pitt's Staffordshire, (1813), p. 20. 'Brown's Derbyshire (1794), p. 14. |