After the Repeal of the Corn-laws 69 



mountain-valleys, as on the Scottish border in Cumberland and 

 Westmorland, where Tremenhere found some such districts, occupied 

 by a yeoman class, as late as i860, 1 . The mountainous nature of the 

 ground in this neighbourhood had prevented the introduction of arable 

 farming, and in consequence the small holdings survived as little sheep 

 and dairy-farms. 



Consideration of the geographical distribution of large and small 

 farms therefore leads to the same conclusion as the chronological 

 study of their history. It shows a close connection between the use 

 to which the land was put on the one hand and the size of the holding 

 on the other. As the large farm system was found where conditions 

 were favourable to corn-growing, and extended itself at a time when 

 corn-growing played the chief part in agriculture, so the small farm 

 system was destroyed at a time when market-gardening and pasture 

 farming (as distinct from mixed husbandry) were unprofitable, and 

 more particularly in those parts of the country where pasture and 

 gardening were least favoured by Nature. Such is the theory de- 

 ducible from a historical study of the question of the unit of agricultural 

 holding in England. It was not, however, the theory which was de- 

 veloped by writers contemporary with the movement : and the theories 

 which they did develop have been of sufficient importance in the 

 general theory of political economy to demand some discussion. 



(d) Contemporary Views and Theories. 



Nothing is more common in economic history, and indeed nothing 

 is more natural, than the deduction of general laws from certain 

 remarkable phenomena. The contemporary student finds the doctrine 

 that all things change a hampering one, and he ignores it. He must 

 have laws and dogmas which will be good for all time. He overlooks 

 the special circumstances which condition a phenomenon, and this 

 short-sightedness enables him to draw out general principles which 

 are not as a matter of fact contained in the phenomenon in question. 

 So in this matter of the unit of holding. It was observed that the 

 large farm system had continued to develop in England for more 

 than a century, and it was concluded that the large farm was the best 

 unit of agricultural holding. This was the theory of Arthur Young, 



1 Report on the Employment of Women and Children, 1868-9, p. 143 : "In the districts 

 where tillage prevails they [small ' statesmen '] are singularly out of place." " The number 

 of small farms is greater in Westmorland than in Cumberland in consequence of the great 

 preponderance of pasture over arable land," etc. 



