214 LARGE FARMS AND CAPITALIST FARMERS 



raised rents to pay his debts of honour, was a greater benefactor 

 to agriculture than the stay-at-home squire who lived frugally 

 in order to keep within his ancestral income. No economist of the 

 day had conceived any other method of satisfying the wants of a 

 growing population except by improving the existing practices of 

 farmers or bringing fresh tracts of land under the plough. Advanced 

 Free Traders like Porter 1 never imagined that a progressive country 

 could become dependent on foreign nations for its daily food. It 

 was to the continuous improvement in agricultural methods that 

 he looked for the means of supplying a population, which, he cal- 

 culated, would, at the end of the nineteenth century, exceed 40 

 millions. Nor did he entertain any doubt that, by the progress 

 of skill and enterprise, the quantity raised in 1840 could be increased 

 by the requisite 150 per cent. 



Encouraged by high profits, approved by economists, justified 

 by necessity, agriculture advanced rapidly on the new lines of 

 large farms and large capital. The change was one side of a wider 

 movement. In the infancy of agriculture and of trade, self- 

 supporting associations had been formed for mutual defence and 

 protection. Manorial organisations like trade guilds had begun to 

 break up, when the central power was firmly established. Now, 

 once more, agriculture and manufacture were simultaneously 

 reorganised. Division of labour had become a necessity. Domestic 

 handicrafts were gathered into populous manufacturing centres, 

 which were dependent for food on the labour of agriculturists. 

 Farms ceased to be self-sufficing industries, and became factories 

 of beef and mutton. The pressure of these conditions demanded 

 the utmost development of the resources of the soil. The cultiva- 

 tion of additional land by the most improved methods grew more 

 and more necessary. Enclosures went on apace. Yet, even in 

 favourable seasons, it was a struggle to keep pace with growing 

 needs ; scarcity, if not famine, resulted from deficiency. During 

 part of the period, foreign supplies might be relied on to avert the 

 worst. But throughout the Napoleonic wars this resource grew 



1 " To supply the United Kingdom with the single article of wheat would 

 call for the employment of more than twice the amount of shipping which 

 now annually enters our ports, if indeed it would be possible to procure the 

 grain from other countries in sufficient quantity ; and to bring to our shores 

 every article of agricultural produce in the abundance which we now enjoy, 

 would probably give constant occupation to the mercantile navy of the whole 

 world " (Progress of the Nation, ed. 1847, p. 136). 



