VII DECLINE OF SMALL LANDOWNER 149 



estimates. Norfolk, I confess, has caused me much trouble ; 

 the returns to the Land Tax are sometimes on the amount 

 of the actual tax paid, sometimes on the rateable value, 

 and I regret to say that they are not very reliable. As 

 to Kent, the explanation is to be found in the fact that 

 the Land Tax assessments include a good many who hold 

 less than one acre. 



If, then, we turn to the Report of the Board of Agri- 

 culture, 1896, 1 we are told that there were some 66,700 

 ' yeomen farming their own land, with an acreage of nearly 

 fe million acres, that is about 14 per cent, of the land 

 [under cultivation in England. From the tables which 

 follow we learn that there is not a single county where 

 fthey do not hold 10 per cent., and that in 11 they hold 

 20 per cent, of the area in cultivation. 



The important feature to notice is the variety in the 

 [percentage of each county, and it is this variety which 

 [points to the conclusion of the whole matter. The small 

 owner has survived where the circumstances were favour- 

 able. 2 His disappearance has been due not so much to 

 [artificial as to natural circumstances, but the circum- 

 stances, political, social, and economical, have since the 

 seventeenth century been against him The political, and 

 to some extent the social, have altered, but the economical 

 Irernain the same. The geographical position of our island, 

 fats climate, its soil, the character of its people, and the 

 jpart we have played and do play in the history of the 

 Iworld, still lean in the same direction, and I agree with 



I 1 Board of Agriculture, 1896, c. 8502, table viii and following 

 tables. 



I 2 The counties in which the peasant proprietor thrives best are : 

 kiincolnshire, the Isle of Axholme, cf. Slater, p. 52; Norfolk, Kent, 

 fessex, especially in the fruit-farms ; Cumberland and Westmoreland, 

 hough they are there declining ; the Vale of Evesham Gloucester- 

 shire, and Worcestershire, chiefly in the orchard district; the New 

 Vorest, Hants ; Devonshire. 





