308 THE RURAL POPULATION, 1780-1813 



on the land of farmers as a by-employment, which eked out the 

 profits of their other industries. Now the commons were gone, 

 and at the same time their own domestic handicrafts were being 

 superseded by manufactured goods. It was now that the industrial 

 population was shifting from the South to the North ; that spinning 

 and weaving deserted the home for the factory ; that old markets 

 were exchanged for the new centres of trade which gathered round 

 the water-power or the coal and iron fields of the North. In the 

 closing years of the eighteenth century, widespread complaints 

 are made of decaying industries, of the loss of employment in rural 

 districts, of the mass of pauperism bequeathed to small towns 

 and villages by the departure of trades. 



Industries, which in 1800 were concentrating in the large towns 

 of the North, had been previously scattered over a wide extent of 

 country districts. Even where the trade maintained its ground, 

 the introduction of machinery reduced the amount of employment, 

 and transferred it from the cottage to the factory. At the same 

 time many local manufactories were brought to the verge of ruin 

 by the war, which limited the export trade. As the result of these 

 changes in the conditions of rural life, poor-rates rose to an enormous 

 height. Marshall, in his Review of the Reports to the Board of 

 Agriculture, mentions the instance of Coggeshall in Essex, once a 

 flourishing village, where the poor-rates, owing to the ruin of the 

 baize trade, had risen to 16s. in the pound. This burden, increased 

 as it was by the provision for the maintenance of the wives and 

 families of militiamen, enlisted soldiers and sailors, crushed out of 

 existence many small freeholders, who, because they employed no 

 labour, derived no advantage from the operation of the Poor Law, 

 but were assessed on the rental value of their land. As the local 

 industries declined, or were concentrated in towns, or substituted 

 machinery for manual work, the demand for labour was reduced 

 in rural villages. Fewer opportunities for supplementing weekly 

 wages by other employments were afforded. It was now that the 

 South and South Midlands fell hopelessly behind the North. 



It is difficult to give any adequate impression of the degree in 

 which, under the dying system of self-contained communities, indus- 

 trial employments other than those of agriculture had been distri- 

 buted among rural villages. Counties which at first sight seem 

 purely agricultural, possessed a number of local industries, which, 

 in addition to dyeworks, malthouses, breweries, mills, and tanneries, 



