SMALL OWNERS 83 



The lesson to be learnt from this and from 

 the opposite procedure in other countries, and 

 notably in Bavaria, where 95 per cent, of the 

 cultivated land is owned by the cultivators, is 

 that legislation can exercise a strong directive 

 influence in these matters, and if it at one 

 time discouraged freehold farming it can also 

 encourage it at another. 



The Small Owner and Economic 

 Conditions. 



But the tendency to legislation is not the 

 whole story. A mass of detailed evidence is 

 given by Mr. Prothero, who virtually con- 

 firms Professor Ashley in regard to the in- 

 fluence of Parliamentary government in 1689, 

 showing that small owners and freehold 

 cultivators were numerous and increasing in 

 almost all parts of the country a century 

 later. They may not have been peasant 

 proprietors, in the ordinary meaning of the 

 word " peasant " ; they were yeomen farm- 

 ers, as they are for the most part on the 

 Continent to-day. The following counties are 

 mentioned by various authorities about the 

 end of the i8th century as having a large and 

 increasing number of small owners : Norfolk, 

 Suffolk, Essex, Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Not- 

 tinghamshire, Hampshire, Wiltshire, Somer- 

 set, Devonshire, Gloucestershire, Shropshire, 

 Staffordshire, Cheshire, Derbyshire, and 



