28 Large and Small Holdings 



socio-political point of view, as leading to rural depopulation. But 

 they were only able to point to a few counties, such as Leicestershire 

 and Northampton, and some parts of Warwickshire and Huntingdon- 

 shire, where enclosure had occasionally led to a lessening of the area 

 under corn. These cases were, as Arthur Young pointed out, fast 

 diminishing exceptions ; and in the whole north and east of the 

 country enclosures were almost invariably followed by an extension 

 of arable. It can hardly be supposed that pasture-farming would be 

 extended after enclosure when by common admission the aim was 

 everywhere to turn pasture into arable. As the price of corn rose 

 higher this became increasingly desirable, and the enclosures would 

 naturally be used to further it. During the French wars this was so 

 markedly the case that no one any longer attempted to dispute it. 



There was yet another cause which contributed to the extension 

 of the large farm system. Many social reformers condemned at the 

 time, and many still condemn, the part played by the landlords in 

 the expropriation of the small holders and the division of the com- 

 mons. But it was not only the large landowners, acting in their own 

 interests as capitalists, who brought about this development. The 

 small proprietors too, the independent yeomanry, even where they 

 remained untouched by the effects of enclosure, dealt a deadly blow 

 at the system of small holdings. The extinction of the yeomanry 

 is the clearest illustration of the irresistible force of the economic 

 conditions which were sweeping away the old system of agricultural 

 holdings. 



In the eighteenth century, and even in the second half of the 

 century, the yeoman class was still numerous. Part of it was indeed 



Price's Observations on Reversionary Payments, 1773, p. 388, in Cursory Remarks, p. 2, and 

 in An impartial view of English Agriculture, 1766, p. i. It is more surpnsing to find 

 that Dr Hasbach adopts it (see his History of the Agricultural I^abourer, pp. 369-71). 

 The points which he brings forward in its favour cannot all be recounted here ; but his 

 argument that pasture-farming was more profitable than arable is certainly misleading. 

 Various facts which contradict it have already been mentioned in the text. He notes that 

 Arthur Young makes a calculation directed to show how much larger a profit was obtainable 

 from an acre of pasture than from an acre of arable. But this is easily understood when it 

 is remembered that Young did not share in the general passion for corn-growing, but 

 advocated pasture-farming and mixed husbandry. Dr Hasbach also adduces in favour 

 of his theory the fact that England ceased to export corn in the last quarter of the 

 eighteenth century. But this by no means proves that the production of corn remained 

 stationary, much less that it decreased. The phenomenon is quite sufficiently explained 

 by the growth of population on the one hand and the bad harvests on the other. Other- 

 wise it hardly seems to be doubted now that the enclosures in general, that is to say the 

 enclosures of open fields and commons taken together, increased the area under corn. Cp. 

 A. H. Johnson, The Disappearance of the Small Landowner, Oxford, 1909, pp. 18 f. 



