8 Large and Small Holdings 



Dorsetshire and Ireland ; only a small proportion was supplied by 

 Norfolk, Cambridgeshire and Essex 1 . London was the great market 

 for poultry. Turkeys came to it from Suffolk, geese from Lincolnshire, 

 etc. 2 Butter was sent in tubs weighing 56 Ibs. from the small farms 

 of Cumberland to far distant counties 3 . Westmorland, Durham, 

 Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Derbyshire, Shropshire and other counties 

 contributed to supply Lancashire with beef and mutton 4 . Gloucester- 

 shire sent fat oxen, sheep, pigs and cheese to London 3 . There was 

 even a certain division of labour as between the various counties. 

 Thus Kent, the garden of England, even then supplied the northern 

 counties with fruit 6 . Cheshire sent large quantities of its cheese to 

 London 7 . London's demand for eggs, which even then is described 

 as being very large, was not supplied by the neighbouring counties, 

 but by some of those at a distance 8 . 



Thus it appears that the means of transport were sufficiently good 

 to open up central as well as local markets to the agriculturists. The 

 improvements made in the roads 9 , and the extension of the network 

 of canals 10 , in the course of the century, of course contributed to this 

 end. 



With the rapid increase of population from the beginning of the 

 century 11 , the increasing wealth of the various classes and the im- 

 proving means of communication, the profits of the small holders 

 seemed secure. 



Corn prices, in the first half of the century, were low. In the 

 period 1692 to 1715 the average price of wheat, according to the Eton 

 tables, was 45^. Sd. In the next fifty years it was only 34^. I id?. 12 



1 J. Middleton, A General View of the Agriculture of Middlesex, 1798, p. 527. 



2 Donaldson, op. cit. Vol. n, pp. 150 ff. 



3 J. Bailey and G. Culley, A General View of the Agriculture of Northumberland, 3rd ed. 

 1813, p. 244. 



4 Hasbach, op. cit. p. 54. 



6 T. Rudge, A General View of the Agriculture of Gloucestershire, 1807, p. 370. 

 8 Bailey and Culley, op. cit. p. 123. 



7 H. Holland, A General View of the Agriculture of Cheshire, 1808, p. 343. 



8 Donaldson, op. cit. Vol. II, p. 150. 



9 Forbes, op. cit. pp. 153 f. 



10 The importance of the canal system, and of shipping generally, for the transport of 

 agricultural produce to the great markets, increased extraordinarily in the eighteenth century. 

 Cp. Arthur Young's admiring words in A Six Weeks' Tour through the Southern Counties, 

 Dublin, 1768, p. 229; and also Forbes, op. cit. p. 154. For the extension of the canal 

 system in the eighteenth century see H. G. Thompson, The Canal System of England, 1902, 

 pp. 8-10. 



u The population increased from 5,400,000 in the year 1700 to 8,600,000 in 1790. 

 Tooke, History of Prices, Vol. I, p. 39. 



