Agricultural Revolution 35 



Many contemporary authors saw practically no harm in this rise 

 of a wealthy and luxurious class of large farmers on the one hand 

 and the development of an agricultural proletariat on the other : 

 especially those who attributed great importance to the technical 

 agricultural improvements brought about by the large arable farm 

 and the extension of enclosure. Arthur Young was certainly correct 

 in pointing to the hard work of the small farmers, who laboured 

 " without intermission like a horse 1 ." But he was not justified in 

 concluding that the lot of a wage-labourer was any better, or even 

 equally good. The small farmer, working for himself, knew very well 

 what he was purchasing at the expense of his longer hours and 

 intenser labour ; he was gaining independence for himself and 

 his family 2 . Even when wages were high and conditions good for 

 the labourer independence remained an inestimable advantage of the 

 small holder, not to be compared with any merely monetary gain. 

 But as a matter of fact the labourer's standard of comfort was being 

 forced down from 1765 onwards. This was a possibility to which the 

 authorities who favoured the transformation of the small independent 

 agriculturists into wage-labourers had given no thought. They were 

 of opinion that the extension of arable farming on the large scale 

 would so increase the demand for labour that wages would rise and 

 the standard of comfort improve. Sinclair prophesied this even as 

 late as I/96 3 . But large as the new demand for labour was, the 

 supply offered by the expropriated farmers and yeomen was larger. 

 The seventh decade of the eighteenth century begins a long period 

 marked by the absence of any complaint on the part of agriculturists 

 concerning scarcity of labour. Even in the neighbourhood of the 



marks the closing years of the eighteenth century is, in fact, the extinction of the common- 

 field farmer, and his transformation into a wage-earner." 



1 Young, Farmer's Letters, p. 112 ; and Lincolnshire, p. 18. 



2 Mavor writes (op. cit. p. 80) : " I have heard it maintained, indeed, that (a labouring 

 farmer) must work harder than a day-labourer, and it probably is the case ; but then his toils 

 are sweetened by the reflection that he is to reap the fruits of his own industry, and that he 

 has no occasion to apply for parochial relief, either for himself or his family. ...Voluntary 

 labour is no hardship ; and living on humble fare is no privation, to him who feels that he is 

 providing against the contingencies of fortune, and laying up something against the approach 

 of age." 



3 first Report from the Select Committee appointed to take into Consideration the Cultiva- 

 tion and Improvement of the Waste, Unenclosed and Unproductive Lands of the Kingdom, 1796, 

 p. 15 : " It is impossible to suppose that the poor should be injured by that circumstance, 

 which secures to them a good market for their labour (in which the real riches of a cottager 

 consists), which will furnish them with the means of constant employment, and by which the 

 farmer will be enabled to pay them better wages than before." 



32 



