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 1790 in the price of 

 provisions ; a substantial advance in agricultural wages. 



DURING the thirty-three years from 1780 to 1813, the industrial 

 revolution, which in agriculture was expressed by the new methods 

 and spirit of farming, influenced rural life in two opposite directions. 

 Far-reaching changes were made which were justified, and even 

 demanded, by national exigencies. As, in trade, the capitalist 

 manufacturer displaced the small master-workman and domestic 

 craftsman, so, in agriculture, land was thrown together in large 

 holdings at the expense of small occupiers. Both manufacture and 

 agriculture became businesses which required the possession of 

 capital. Without money, workers, whether in trade or on land, lost 

 the prospect of themselves becoming masters or employers. But 

 the same changes which brought unexampled prosperity to land- 

 owners and large tenant-farmers, combined with other causes to 

 plunge the rest of the rural population into almost unparalleled 

 misery. The rapid growth of manufacturing towns created a 

 new demand for bread and meat ; it raised the rents of land- 

 owners ; it swelled the profits of farmers. For a long series 

 of years the war, by practically excluding foreign corn, main- 

 tained a high level of agricultural prices in spite of increased 

 production. But to labourers who neither owned nor occupied land, 

 the rise of prices brought no compensating advantages. On the 



