VII DECLINE OF SMALL LANDOWNER 139 



Indeed, only three authorities that I have come across 

 tell a different tale. Defoe, writing in 1724, speaks in the 

 well-known passage of ' 1,400 or 1,500 freeholders about 

 Canterbury alone, who, for the plainness of their appearance, 

 are called the grey coats of Kent, but are so considerable 

 that whoever they vote for is sure to carry the election '. l 

 An anonymous writer in 1733 says that the number of 

 freeholders must be much less than 400,000. 2 Homer, on 

 Enclosures, 1766, declares there is scarce any county in 

 which the numbers of the freeholders do not turn out upon an 

 election more considerable than formerly. 3 All these, how- 

 ever, are loose statements, and besides, freeholders might be 

 increased by enfranchising copyholds, or by substituting 

 leases for lives, or by the numerous methods for creating 

 fancy franchises already mentioned. 4 >x 



When, however, we pass to the next period, that is from 

 1785 to 1802, the returns from the assessments do not, as 

 far as they go, give the expected answer. If we are to 

 believe the statement of many authorities that consolidation 

 always followed rapidly on enclosure, and that it also 

 accompanied the industrial revolution, this period should 

 be marked by a great decline in the number both of owners 

 and occupiers. This was the opinion of A. Toynbee in his 

 Industrial Revolution, an opinion repeated by Mantoux, 

 who calls the close of the eighteenth century the period of 

 'the agony of the yeomanry ', not only in those counties 

 where great industries arose, but in purely agricultural 

 counties as well. 6 



1 Defoe, Tour, vol. i, Letter ii, 38. 



a Godwin, Pol. Tracts, Bodl. Lib. 1154, p. 28. 



8 Homer, Essay on Enclosures, p. 15. 



* Porrit, Unreformed Parliament, p. 22. 



5 Mantoux, La Revolution industrielle, p. 129. He gives references 

 to authorities for Warwickshire, Hertford, and Lancashire; see also 

 Levy, Entstehung des landwirthschaftl. Orossbetriebes, p. 62. 



