2IO Histoiy of the English Landed Interest. 



farmers know how to toil, to obtain sufficient means to keep 

 body and soul together. 



In 1651, Blith had described poor farmers as " living worse 

 than in Bridewell." Certainly the hard manual labour en- 

 tailed by the small holding, if not the scant}' diet it afforded, 

 would have compared unfavourably with these two items of 

 prison life. 



The contest between the advocates of small holdings and 

 those of large pasture farms attracted much literary talent to 

 the subject. For a time the farmer's mind would be drawn to- 

 wards one kind of agricultural economy by that special pleader 

 Arthur Young, or the agricultural divine, Dr. Howlett, and 

 then be once more unsettled, as some vigorous appeal in favour 

 of small holdings from the pen of John Mills, Greorge Chalmers, 

 or Richard Price, came under his notice. Many considerations 

 biassed men's minds towards one system or the other. The 

 Labour question had become the burning subject of the hour. 

 " I knew too much of the inconveniency and slavery," wrote 

 TuU, " attending the exorbitant power of husbandry servants 

 and labourers over their masters to propose to myself any 

 other gain by occupying land but to repair the injuries done 

 to it by bad tenants." The working classes were leaving the 

 rural districts and following in the wake of those textile in- 

 dustries which, hitherto carried on in the farmer's homestead, 

 were henceforth to find a wider field for development in the 

 town factory. Instead of descending to entreaty or bribes in 

 order to induce his labourers to remain at home, the farmer 

 naturally chose the more independent process of laying his 

 land down to grass and enclosing it. 



Many, however, still preferred the common pasturage on 

 the waste to the improved herbage which could be obtained 

 from the enclosed grass field. There was a strong reluctance, 

 in a class by no means sure of its tenancies, to lay out capital 

 in fences and pasture seeds. The short distich, — 



" Bouch and sit, 

 Improve and flit," 



had become a common proverb of the period. 



