Agricultural Revolution 17 



or two large farmers and thrown together into large holdings 1 . The 

 small plots of the cottagers and little farmers, holdings of from one 

 to eight acres or so, on which their occupiers had mostly raised live- 

 stock and dairy produce, practically vanished altogether in the course 

 of the Napoleonic wars. " Such was the competition for land during 

 the war," wrote Perry in 1846, "and such the disposition of the 

 landowners to blot out the existence of small farms... that in a few 

 years nearly the last vestige of these small holdings had dis- 

 appeared 2 ." 



The rise in wheat-prices was severely felt by the small holders, 

 who had sent little of their produce to market, and had been for the 

 most part accustomed to buy corn. The bad seasons affected their 

 own crops ; they needed to buy larger quantities than before, and 

 meantime the price was constantly increasing. Others, who had 

 previously grown sufficient for their own needs, found themselves, in 

 consequence of the same bad seasons, obliged to buy 8 . In these 

 years of scarcity the small farmers who had corn to sell were the 

 exception ; most of them had not enough for themselves 4 . In 1772 

 Arthur Young had described a holding of twelve acres as sufficient to 

 produce all the corn required by its occupier; in 1799, at the time 

 of the worst harvests, he found that even in unusually fertile districts 

 of Lincolnshire a holding of twenty acres was needed for the purpose 5 . 

 There certainly were small farmers who held more than this, and who 

 sold corn. But corn for the market was never more than a by- 

 product of small farming: its main sphere lay, as has been shown, in 

 pasture-farming and the lesser branches of agriculture. 



Possibly if the profits on these branches of production had 

 increased they might have compensated the little farmer for the loss 

 consequent on the rise in corn-prices. But, as has been shown above, 

 the market for meat, dairy produce, vegetables, etc. deteriorated 

 in proportion as the price of corn and bread went up and the 



1 J. S. Girdler, Observations on the Pernicious Consequences of Forestalling, Regrating and 

 Engrossing, 1800, p. 25. So also the Report respecting Grain of November 1814, p. 77. 



3 G. W. Perry, The Peasantry of England, 1846, p. 19; see also p. 20. Also The 

 Labourers' Friend, loc. cit. pp. 2 and 3. 



3 As early as 1760, Thos. Hitt points out that the high corn-prices did not only affect the 

 consumers adversely, but also many farmers; A Treatise of Husbandry, 1760, p. 52: 

 " In wet years there are many tillers of land in the kingdom who have not only no corn to 

 sell, but are necessitated to buy part of what they use in their houses for bread, beer, etc., 

 also seed to sow their land with." 



4 See the description given by Bailey and Culley, op. cit. p. 163. 



5 Young, Lincolnshire, p. 17. 



