Agricultural Revolution 43 



position against those who regretted that the cottager should be driven 

 from his holding. But at the beginning of the nineteenth century 

 Sir John Sinclair is found as the most zealous advocate of allotments, 

 and in fact as the first to demand that particular form of holding 

 which has become famous in later times under the title of "three 

 acres and a cow 1 ." In 1801 the Board of Agriculture, of which 

 Sinclair was president, offered a prize to the person "who shall 

 explain in the most satisfactory manner the best means of render- 

 ing the allotment system as general throughout the kingdom as 

 circumstances will admit 2 ." The enthusiasts who had seen nothing 

 but good in the rise of corn-prices, the progress of the large farm 

 system and the disappearance of small holdings now experienced a 

 certain reaction. Arguing as economists they remained defenders 

 of the larger agricultural unit, which was still in process of develop- 

 ment under the spur of the rising corn-prices. But they could no 

 longer deck out their economic ideal in plumes borrowed from social 

 reformers. They now desired to get rid of the social evils which had 

 followed upon their favoured developments by means of an artificial 

 revival of the cottager's holding. Allotments were to make the 

 labourer once again independent, keep him off the poor-rate and set 

 bounds to the rural exodus 8 . Previously the social effects of the new 

 system had been overlooked for the sake of its economic advan- 

 tages. Now, in spite of the force of the economic tendencies, it was 

 hoped that the social evils of the system might be overcome. But the 

 hope was not justified by events. 



Certain liberally-minded landlords, as for example Lord Winchilsea, 

 did indeed support the propaganda of the Board of Agriculture 4 in 

 favour of the extension of allotments. But they were few in com- 

 parison with the great mass of landowners, and these, in the first 

 decade of the nineteenth century, were eagerly developing the large 

 farm system, as with the still rising corn-prices it brought them ever- 

 increasing rents. The large farmers were their favourite tenants, and 

 whatever the large farmers desired the landlords accepted as desirable. 

 But the large farmers found the underpaid labour of the landless, rate- 

 aided labourers quite to their mind, and Culley, for instance, declared 



1 Sir John Sinclair, Observations on the Means of enabling a Cottager to keep a Cow, 

 1801, pp. 4, n. 



2 Cp. C. W. Stubbs, The Land and the Labourer, ed. of 1891, pp. 39 ff. 



8 See e.g. Murray, op. cit. p. 31 : " They will not, as now is too much the case, be 

 driven into towns and villages far from the farm, for a residence." 



4 Communications, Vol. I, and ed. 1804, pp. 77 ff. ; and Annals, Vol. XL, 1803, p. 51. 



