156 ENGLISH RURAL LIFE 



the old element of isolation which had been the charac- 

 teristic of the English village from remote times. 



Notwithstanding railways and new commercial ideas, 

 sport maintained its position in rural life. Fox-hunting 



became more and more a great affair carried 

 Sport. on a t considerable cost. The coursing of 



hares continued. Shooting on a large scale 

 spread throughout England, and every landholder of any 

 importance had his gamekeeper. Enormous numbers 

 of partridges and pheasants were preserved. Although 

 an Act of Parliament, passed in i83i, x did away with 

 the monopoly of killing game previously enjoyed by 

 the large landholders, still shooting, like hunting and 

 coursing, remained in the hands of the landholding and 

 farming classes and such of the wealthy people of the 

 towns as took a special interest in country life. 



A sanguine student of rural life in the early 'seventies 

 might have felt a real pride in describing rural England 



of the day. He could comment on the 

 Conclusion. marvellous progress in cultivation and the 



reward obtained by the farmers for their 

 capacity and energy. He could call attention to the 

 real improvement in the condition of the labouring class 

 since the early years of the century, when pauperism j 

 was almost universal amongst this class. He would 

 have no doubts as to the success of the policy of 

 * enclosure/ of large farms, and of agriculture under 

 Free Trade, and would feel himself justified in pre- 

 dicting a long period of prosperity on the lines laid 

 down in the preceding half-century. Nothing would j 

 have suggested to him the possibility of the disaster 

 that as a fact occurred. 



1 See Appendix, p. 172. 



