84 LAND OWNERSHIP 



Yorkshire. Exceptions were Lancashire, 

 Westmorland, and Warwickshire, and in all 

 these cases the competition of manufacturing 

 towns and the superior openings offered by 

 industry or trade are mentioned, Hertford- 

 shire is another exception. 



The cause of this agricultural expansion 

 was undoubtedly the prosperity then pre- 

 vailing; there was a "boom" in agriculture, 

 due to high prices and improvements in 

 farming. If it had lasted, there seems to be 

 no reason why the number of owning culti- 

 vators should not have been maintained and 

 augmented. But it collapsed suddenly with 

 the end of the Napoleonic war and the sub- 

 sequent fall of prices. Intense depression set 

 in, aggravated by excessive taxation, and 

 lasted for 20 years. It was in this period, 

 which is vividly described by Mr. Prothero, 

 that the small freeholders disappeared most 

 rapidly. All classes engaged in agriculture 

 suffered, but this class was to a great extent 

 wiped out. " To freeholders, whether gentry, 

 yeomen farmers, or peasant proprietors, the 

 Napoleonic war, with its crushing load of 

 taxation and subsequent collapse of prices, 

 had been fatal," says Mr. Prothero, and he 

 quotes the contemporary evidence of Glover, 

 who wrote in 1817 about the ruin of the 

 yeomen farmers. They had to sell, but the 

 " purchasers were not men of their own class. 



