VI OF THE SMALL LANDOWNER 119 



likely to outlive them, whereas merchants and men in any 

 way of commerce have often outlived their misfortunes/ l 



On the other hand, the constant rise in the price of 

 agricultural produce made the large farmers willing to 

 pay high rents. Ricardo, interpreting the facts of the day, 

 wrote his theory of Rent, and prophesied its indefinite rise. 2 

 Land therefore was looked upon as a good prospective 

 investment, and was eagerly sought after by the wealthy 

 landowner, and still more so by the successful lawyer, or 

 manufacturer or trader. Thus, more and more, the owner- 

 ship and the farming of land became divorced from one 

 another, and the smaller owner was bought out. 



The similarity between the evolution of the industrial 

 and agricultural movements is close. As in the town the 

 small master- workman is superseded by the capitalist manu- 

 facturer, so in the country the small farmer disappears 

 before the capitalist farmer, while the landlord, who no 

 longer tills his land, but looks upon it as an investment, 

 finds his counterpart in the department of industry in the 

 monied man who invests his money in the new enterprises. 

 Many landowners, no doubt still continued to farm them- 

 selves, others still exercised a general control over their 

 estates, but much of this work was done by agents, who 

 may be compared to the paid officials of the industrial com- 

 panies which had already appeared. 



To these purely economical reasons we must add the social 

 and political. In the shifting and rapidly changing society 

 of England the ownership of land had long been considered 

 the only stable and certain proof of position. In the 



1 Letter to a Freeholder on the Land Tax, Godwin, Political Tracts, 

 1731-2. Cf. A. Smith's statement, that no man can grow rich out of 

 a small property in land, quoted p. 117, note 1. 



2 Rent doubled in the closing years of the eighteenth century. As 

 much as forty-five years' purchase was given for land. 



