42 THE LANDED INTEREST. 



extending their circle. Such produce renders the 

 land more valuable, more tempting prices are 

 offered for it to the small landowners, and their 

 numbers decrease. Wealthy men from the 

 mines and manufactories and shipping and 

 colonial interests, and the learned professions, 

 desire to become proprietors of land ; and some 

 competition exists between them and those 

 landowners of older standing whose increasing 

 wealth tempts them on suitable opportunities 

 to enlarge the boundaries of their domains. 

 Thus small proprietors are bought out, and 

 agricultural landowners diminish in number ; 

 while, side by side with them, vast urban popu- 

 lations are growing up, having little other con- 

 nection with the land than that of recruiting 

 their population from it, and affording the best 

 market for its produce. 

 Proportion The Domesday Book for the United King- 



of land- 

 owners to dom, lately published, divides the landowners 



whole 



popula- into two classes those who have less than one 



tion. 



acre of land, and those who have one acre and 

 upwards. The former comprise 70 per cent, of 

 the whole ; but as none of this class has so 



