4 2 Large and Small Holdings 



turn of the century. Possibly the evil social consequences showed 

 themselves so clearly at this time that no candid thinker could 

 deny them ; possibly Young, Sinclair and the rest had really 

 expected different results from the measures they advocated than 

 actually followed. At any rate their views were radically altered. 

 Young, once the most zealous advocate of the enclosures, now com- 

 plained that they had in most cases, though not necessarily, 

 produced "this evil;... that instead of giving property to the poor, 

 or preserving it, or enabling them to acquire it, the very contrary 

 effect has taken place 1 ." Again, whereas in 1772 he had spoken 

 in the most contemptuous manner of the cottager's cows 1 , he now 

 lamented that they had been lost to the labourers through the con- 

 solidation of farms, and recounted at length all cases of the kind 

 which were known to him. It seems that as he grew older he came 

 to take more and more account of the social consequences of economic 

 conditions, instead of looking simply at the greatest possible profit to 

 be made, or at the purely economic fitness of things. And while from 

 the latter point of view he had defended the large farm system on the 

 ground of the increasing profitableness of corn-growing, now, regard- 

 ing the social aspect of the new form of agricultural management, he 

 became more and more sensible of the advantages of the small holding. 

 On social grounds he became a strong advocate of the revival 

 of cottagers' holdings (now to become known as allotments), though 

 thirty years earlier he had for economic reasons approved of their 

 abolition. He strongly opposed Malthus' arguments against the 

 creation of allotments 3 , and described their advantages with as much 

 enthusiasm as some modern social reformers show for them 4 . He sug- 

 gested all possible means by which agricultural labourers, "that class 

 of people upon which all others depend 5 ," might be assured of holding 

 land of their own and of possessing a cow 6 . Sinclair's change of mind 

 is equally remarkable. In the Report already quoted he had described 

 wage-labour as the mainstay of the cottager, and so had defended his 



1 Annals of Agriculture, Vol. XXXVI, 1801, p. 515. 



2 Farmer's Letters, p. 94, and also p. 181. 



3 Malthus was decidedly against allotments, regarding them as an inducement to the 

 increase of population, which, in his view, would speedily make the advantages of the 

 allotment illusory. See On the Principle of Population, 5th ed. 1817, Vol. Ill, p. 241 ; and 

 Young's reply in Annals, Vol. XLI, 1804, p. 231. 



4 Young, Annals, Vol. xxxvi, pp. 510, 511 and 456; Vol. XXXIX, 1803, p. 251 ; and 



Vol. XLI, p. 231. 



8 Young, Lincolnshire, p. 419. 



8 Young, The Question of Scarcity plainly stated and Remedies considered, 1800, pp. 77 f. 



