CHAPTER I 



THE AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION OF THE EIGHTEENTH 

 CENTURY AND THE PERIOD OF THE CONTINENTAL 

 SYSTEM 



LONG before the eighteenth century there had been a period 

 when large farms were formed in great numbers, namely in the 

 middle of the fifteenth century, when the growing profits of sheep- 

 breeding led landlords to buy up small peasant properties and throw 

 them together into a few large farms. But it would be a mistake to 

 suppose that it was at this period that the modern system of the large 

 farm originated. The large holdings then formed were of quite a 

 different kind from those of the nineteenth century and the present 

 day. They were pasture-farms serving for sheep-breeding and the 

 production of wool. The origin of the modern large farm is to be 

 traced to the time when corn-growing flourished. On it were worked 

 out the great modern improvements in the art of corn-cultivation. 

 It is even doubtful whether the large farms of the fifteenth century 

 were not transformed again into small holdings in the sixteenth and 

 seventeenth centuries, which certainly saw a reaction in favour of small 

 farming 1 . 



At any rate it is clear that in the first half of the eighteenth 

 century there still remained a great number of small and very small 

 holdings. Moreover when in the second half of the century the rapid 

 consolidation of small holdings into large farms began, the indigna- 

 tion which broke out and the importance ascribed to the movement 

 point to the conclusion that till that time no tendency to increase the 

 size of farms had been noticeable. 



These small holdings of the eighteenth century were of various 

 classes. In the first place we have very small plots, some of whose 

 holders were also owners, some tenants of a landlord or sub-tenants 

 under a farmer. In any case they were for the most part labourers 

 as well as occupiers ; working for such neighbouring larger farmers as 

 might at times need the services of day-labourers to supplement the 



1 J. Rae, Why have the Yeomanry perished? in Contemporary Review, Vol. XLIV, 1883, 

 p. 94. 



