362 History of the English Landed Interest. 



supposed exhausting effects and comparative uselessness of 

 the former), " a melancholy consideration." He would have 

 liked to have seen a greater proportion of leguminous crops 

 to cereals, as he feared lest the sterilising effects of the latter 

 might soon prove permanently deleterious to the land. Tak- 

 ing the statistics as a whole, he was so far reassuring as to 

 assert that " under such a rural economy no kingdom could 

 be called badly cultivated." ^ 



Dividing next the entire number of holdings into classes, 

 according as their acreage varied between 50 and 100 acres, 

 100 and 200 acres, and so on, he found that the excessive pro- 

 portions of draught cattle to acreage before mentioned were 

 entirely owing to the wasteful economy practised on small 

 holdings, that cows were naturally less plentiful on the larger 

 farm on account of its poorer pasturage. The numbers of 

 fatting cattle and young stock were favourable to the economy 

 of " middling sized " holdings, and the numbers of population 

 decreased from 20 souls on farms above 1,000 acres gradually 

 as the scale descends to 11 on farms under 200 acres. " Great 

 farmers," he points out, " are generally rich farmers, and it 

 requires no great skill in agriculture to know that they who 

 have most money in their pockets will, upon an average, 

 cultivate the soil in the most complete manner ; good culture 

 in most cases, is but another word for much labour."^ A great 

 portion of the labour on a large farm comes under the head 

 of extras. Improvements, such as marling, chalking, paring 

 and burning; periodical tillages such as turnip-hoeing, etc., 

 required extra labour at certain seasons which did not appear 

 in his estimate of permanently employed hands. " On the 

 other hand, great farmers," he shows, do not keep nearly the 

 proportion of servants, maids and boys, that the smaller ones 

 do. The superiority in population of the larger holding " lies 

 totally in labourers, indeed it would be useless and impossible 

 for them (large farmers) to keep the proportion of servants as 

 small farmers, their houses would not contain them. But it 

 is not the employment of single hands," he sums up, " that 



^ Farmer^ s Tour in the East of England, vol. iii. p. 378, etc. 



* Six Months^ Tour through the North of England, vol. iii. p. 255. 



