Diminution in Number of Small Estates. 43 



extending their circle. Such produce renders the 

 land more valuable, more tempting prices are 

 offered for it to the small landowners, and their 

 numbers decrease. Wealthy men from the 

 mines and manufactories and shipping and 

 colonial interests, and the learned professions, 

 desire to become proprietors of land ; and some 

 competition exists between them and those land- 

 owners whose increasing wealth tempts them on 

 suitable opportunities to enlarge the boun- 

 daries of their domains. Thus small proprietors 

 are bought out, and agricultural landowners 

 diminish in number ; while, side by side with 

 them, vast urban populations are growing up, 

 having little other connection with the land than 

 that of affording the best market for its produce. 



The Domesday Book for the United King- Proportion 



of land- 



dom, lately published, divides the landowners owners to 



whole 



into two classes — those who have less than one popula- 

 tion, 



acre of land, and those who have one acre and 320,000 to 



33,000,000 



upwards. The former comprise 70 per cent, of 

 the whole ; but as none of this class has so 

 much as an acre, and they hold together less 

 than a two-hundredth part of the land, they may 



