CONTENTS xiii 



CHAPTER XIII. 

 HIGHWAYS. 



Difficulties of communication ; influence of natural waterways on inland 

 trade ; artificial waterways and canal construction ; Roman roads ; 

 mediaeval road-repair : roads in Tudor times ; introduction of turnpikes 

 at the Restoration ; condition of eighteenth century roads ; failure of 

 statutory labour ; rival theories of Telford and M'Adam ; extinction of 

 turnpike trusts ; highway rates ; main roads. Pp. 275-289 



CHAPTER XIV. 

 THE RURAL POPULATION. 1780-1813. 



Effect of enclosures on the rural population ; no necessary reduction in the 

 number of small owners, but rather an increase ; consolidation of farms, 

 either by purchase from small owners, or by throwing tenancies together ; 

 the strict letter of the law ; small occupiers become landless labourers ; 

 depopulation of villages when tillage was abandoned for pasture ; scarcity 

 of employment in open-field villages ; the literary controversy ; the mate- 

 rial injury inflicted upon the rural poor by the loss of the commons ; no 

 possible equivalent in cash-value : the moral injury ; the simultaneous 

 decay of domestic industries ; the rapid rise after 1 790 in the price of 

 provisions; a substantial advance in agricultural wages. Pp. 290-315 



CHAPTER XV. 



AGRICULTURAL DEPRESSION AND THE POOR LAW. 



1813-1837. 



War taxation : peace and beggary slow recovery of agriculture ; the harvest 

 of 1813 ; reality and extent of distress ; the fall of prices ; bankruptcies 

 of tenant-farmers; period of acute depression, 1814-36; ruin of small 

 owners ; misery of agricultural labourers ; reduction in wages and scarcity 

 of employment ; allowances from the rates ; general pauperisation : the 

 new Poor Law, 1834, and its administration. Pp. 316-331 



CHAPTER XVI. 



TITHES. 



The incidence of tithes under the old law ; the historical origin of tithes ; 

 a free-will offering ; a customary payment ; the appeal to conscience : 



