116 CAUSES OF THE DECLINE 





brewing, but must have delicate food, whose da 

 play the clavecin and dress like the daughters of a d. 



Just as the small craftsman was unable to compete 

 the great masters of industry, so the small farmer \ , 

 beaten by the larger. He had neither the capital 2 nor 

 the knowledge requisite for more intensive cultivation. 

 He could not watch the markets nor hold back his goods 

 when prices were low, 3 and this inability to wait, increased 

 by the absence of good roads or communications, was 

 peculiarly disastrous amidst the violent fluctuations to 

 which the price of corn was subject. At the same time 

 the domestic industries by which his family had helped 

 him were being crushed out by the factory system, while 

 the increasing poor rate caused more especially by the 

 policy of granting allowances in support of wages 

 threatened to beggar him. In despair he abandoned his 

 tenancy, if he had saved a little capital, to seek a new life 

 in town or abroad, where he had prospects of a better 

 return than from his small farm ; if not, to fall back into 

 the class of landless labourers whose numbers had already 

 been recruited from the cottagers. And if the engrossing 

 of farms and the enclosures alone enabled England to take 

 the lead in industrial supremacy, it was the growth of 

 industry which, by giving employment to those driven 

 from the country, alone saved England from serious riots 



The effect on the small owner, whether freeholder or 

 copyholder, as distinguished from the small tenant-farmer, 

 varied in different parts of England, and it is this which 

 no doubt partly accounts for the contradictory opinior 



1 Burton, 1751 ; Country Farmer, Cursory remarks on Enclosi 

 1786, p. 21. 



2 5 an acre was held necessary to work a farm properly. 



3 Marshall, South. Dep., 383 1 ' The farmers of Surrey have so litt 

 of the impartial system of commerce that they prefer to sell the 

 grain to an old customer at a lower price rather than desert him.' 



