146 EVIDENCES AS TO DATE OF 



V,, 



increase in the number of owners, but a decrease in the 

 number of yeomen, in Kent, in Herefordshire, and in 

 Lancashire a fall in the number of owners and a rise in 

 the number of those who occupy ; in Wiltshire a rise, and 

 in Norfolk a slight fall in both. 1 



The story of the sixty years from 1832 to 1892 would 

 lead us to the conclusion that as a general rule the small 

 occupying owner is more affected by hard times than by 

 good. It is often said that he eagerly sold his land in the 

 good times and took to trade or manufacture. No doubt 

 this did to an extent occur. But, as a rule, the small cul- 

 tivator in England, as in France, is not a man of much 

 enterprise or ambition. He clings to his old home and to 

 his ancestral occupation, and if he is prosperous he will 

 probably prefer to put his savings into more land or adopt 

 a higher style of living. Unfortunately, he is not often 

 adverse to borrowing, and the mortgage has ever been the 

 curse of the small owner ; more sold in the bad times be- 

 cause they were obliged, and though they sold at a loss, 

 than in the good times when they could have sold at a 

 profit. 



One more remark I should like to make. From a 

 somewhat careful inquiry into the relation of enclosure 

 to consolidation, while I do not deny that enclosure, both 

 of common field and of waste, did facilitate consolidation : 

 and was sometimes advocated for that very purpose, I hav< 

 come to the conclusion that it was not necessarily folio we: 

 by an absorption of small holdings. Whether it was so ci 

 not depended on whether the moment of enclosure was ont 



1 Tables : Oxon., VI, IX ; Kent, X ; Herefordshire, XVII ; Lanca-] 

 shire, XI ; Wilts., VII ; Norfolk, XII. 



2 Miss Leonard, Transactions Royal Hist. Soc., xix. 121, says, th.3 

 at the opening of the nineteenth century we find fewer propertiefj 

 and larger farms in enclosed than in unenclosed parishes, and quote 

 Marshall, Midlands, pp. 206, 250, 848. 



