io Large and Small Holdings 



It is natural, again, that under these circumstances there was no 

 question, up to about the year 1765, of any consolidation of small 

 farms. Large farmers who grew corn were not as a rule in any 

 serious distress, but the periods of specially low prices sufficed to 

 prevent any great extension of the area under corn and any general 

 increase in the size of holdings. Although a little later Arthur Young 

 expatiated on the satisfactory results of William Ill's bounty on 

 export 1 , he only did so because he was desirous of showing that State 

 action could help to keep up prices. Certainly the price of wheat 

 would have fallen still lower if the home market had not been relieved 

 by the export of corn in years of plenty. But even the artificially 

 high price induced by the bounty was too low to bring about any real 

 increase of arable farming, improvement of poor land and the like. 

 Arthur Young himself said in 1774 that he had every reason to 

 believe that agriculture (by which he always means corn-growing) had 

 made practically no progress in the cheap years 1730 to I756 2 . 



But a radical change in all these conditions took place in the 

 second half of the eighteenth century. From about the year 1765 to 

 the end of the Napoleonic wars in 1815 prices rose almost unceasingly, 

 and more especially the price of those particular commodities whose 

 cheapness in the first half of the eighteenth century had proved so 

 beneficial to the mass of the population, namely the prices of corn 

 and of bread. From 34^. lid. in the period 1715 to 1765 the price of 

 wheat rose to 45^. yd. in the period 1760 to 1790, and to $$s. i id. in 

 the following decade. From 1805 to 1813 the annual average price 

 was never below 73.?., and often over IOOT. In 1812 it reached 



122S. Sd. 3 



The causes of this great and constantly increasing rise were 

 various. In the first place, the fifty years up to 1765 had been a 

 period of extraordinarily good harvests. According to Tooke, in all 

 that time there were only five bad years 4 . With the year 1765 this 



tions. Thus W. Allen, in The Landlords Companion, 1742, p. 13, says that in the 

 prosperous times woodlands and sheep-walks had been turned into ploughland. These 

 would naturally become unprofitable again when prices fell. And even the bounty on 

 export did not prevent this distress, since it was never able to keep the price of wheat at 

 the level which would have been necessary to meet the increased rents of the arable farms. 

 Cp. furthei on this particular point W. Ellis, The Modern Husbandman, Month of December, 

 '743- PP- 96-7 a d 98-111. Also Tooke, op. cit. pp. 27, 46, 52, and Vol. vi, p. 383-4; and 

 Rogers, op. cit. p. in. 



1 Arthur Young, Political Arithmetic, 1774, pp. 29 ff. 



Ibid., p. 33. 



* G. R. Porter, Progress of the Nation, 1851, p. 148. 



4 Tooke, op. cit. Vol. I, pp. 39 f. 



