VI OF THE SMALL LANDOWNER 121 



advantage and so*ld, capitalists gratified both their tastes 

 and their speculative instincts and ambition by buying ', l 

 and all evidence goes to prove that it was the desire of the 

 moneyed man to become a landowner, rather than the 

 craving of the already large landowner to lay field to field, 

 that led to the destruction of the small landowner. 



Meanwhile, a large property once accumulated, family 

 pride forbade its subdivision. The leaning of the law in 

 favour of primogeniture was therefore gladly followed by 

 wills, and strengthened a thousandfold by family settle- 

 ments, a practice which apparently was not much resorted 

 to by the yeomen, or small owners. 



How far this change had progressed before the close of 

 the nineteenth century, and the question as to the dates 

 when the change was most rapid, we shall subsequently 

 discuss; but it is at least certain that the small owners 

 died hard. A great many, more than is usually sup- 

 posed, survived the Napoleonic Wars; nor had the num- 

 bers of the smaller squires been as yet seriously diminished. 

 The character was evidently well known to the novelist 

 and playwright of the time. There were still many 

 parishes where the common field was unenclosed and where 

 a waste remained; nor had domestic by-industries been 

 entirely destroyed. The famine prices during the war had 

 kept the yeomen going, while the continued rise in rents 

 and in the price of land had influenced all who could to 

 stick to the land, and even to speculate, often with borrowed 

 money, in a commodity which seemed to promise such an 

 unlimited unearned increment. 



The bad times then followed. The wars had caused 

 inflated prices. In 1813, the price of corn had reached 

 126*. 6d. the quarter. In 1815, it had fallen to 65*. 7<1., 





1 Prothero, Pioneers, p. 88. 



