Agricultural Revolution 21 



view far behind his competitor ; a fact admitted even by writers who 

 were not so one-sidedly in favour of large farming as were Young, 

 Sinclair and Marshall 1 . 



This inability to increase their production of corn or to compete 

 in that sphere with the large farmers meant to the small holders the 

 loss of the very conditions of their existence. With the change in 

 the price of corn the whole face of the agricultural world was 

 changed. The profits of corn-growers rose in proportion as the 

 price went up. They found that even the most expensive improve- 

 ments were well worth making. Corn-growing on a large scale 

 became a good investment for capital. It even became the fashion. 

 Doctors, lawyers, clergymen and soldiers all turned farmers 2 . Mean- 

 time, with the rise of farming profits, the rent of farms rose too*. It 

 was rising all through the second half of the eighteenth century, and 

 by the last decade of the eighteenth and the first decade of the nine- 

 teenth it had as a rule become double or treble, sometimes four or 

 five times, as high as it had been about 1770*. 



But the farms whose rents had risen in this way were not the 

 little holdings of the cottagers or of the small pasture-farmer. Nor 

 could the rents of the small holders on the open fields be raised to 

 any great extent, for, as has been shown, they were not in a position 

 to increase their output of corn. It was the large farmer, selling corn 

 wholesale and drawing high profits from its high price, who was able 

 to pay an increased rent. Not only was his production per acre the 

 highest, but his expenses of production per acre were much less than 

 those on the small or even the medium holding. Very soon after the 

 rise in prices began this state of affairs produced complaints on the 

 part of the small holders. In 1772 Comber wrote that "a third 

 very principal cause of complaint is, that the advancer of their rents 

 has paid no regard to the various sizes of their farms, but has, 

 almost indiscriminately, raised them all 8 ." These enhanced rents were 



1 E.g. Davis, Wiltshire, p. 73 : "In those modes of husbandry where the hands as 

 well as the eyes of the farmer, and every branch of his family, can be fully employed, small 

 farms can be managed to advantage. In dairy farms this is peculiarly the case, and it is 

 frequently so in countries where the land is partly applied to breeding cattle and partly to 

 raising corn. ...But on Wiltshire Down farms, where horses are necessary to plough the land 

 and sheep to manure it, the little farmer stands on a very disadvantageous comparison with 

 the great one ; being obliged to bear a much greater proportional expense in horses and 

 servants." 



2 Thorold Rogers, Work and Wages, p. 108. 



3 A. Young, Enquiry into the Progressive Value of Money, p. 102. 



4 For details see Levy, op. cit pp. 6-7. 

 J Comber, op. cit. p. 4. 



