VI 



ECONOMICAL AND OTHER CAUSES OF THE 

 DECLINE OF THE SMALL LANDOWNER 

 IN THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH 

 CENTURIES 



THE real solvent of the old English agricultural com- 

 munity would seem to have been the extension of the 

 commercial spirit to the field of agricultural industry. 

 This, as we have already shown, first commenced at the 

 close of the fifteenth century, but it was in the eighteenth 

 century that it reached its final consummation. And it is 

 the working of this commercial spirit which I now propose 

 to deal with. 



We have already quoted Hasbach's opinion that it was 

 the desire of the landlord to increase his rents which first 

 led to consolidation of farms, and this, because expenses 

 were thereby reduced, and therefore the net gain was higher, 

 and because it was easier to collect rent from one big than 

 many small farmers. 1 



Yet, apart from this somewhat sordid, though not 

 unnatural motive, there was from the beginning of the 

 eighteenth century a growing conviction as to the desir- 

 ability of more scientific farming. This belief, again, first 

 definitely appears in Tudor times in the works of Tusser 



1 A. Young, Northern Tour, ii. 84, advises the raising of rents to urge 

 tenants to greater effort, and says, ' if you would have vigorous culture 

 throw fifteen or twenty (small) farms into one as soon as the present 

 occupiers die off'; Levy, Entstehung und Ruckgang des landwirth- 

 schaftlicheu Grossbetriebes in England. 



