1 50 History of the English Landed Intei'est. 



for, say, eight million manufacturers required in order to 

 supply the agricultural community with necessaries. In times 

 "when the population was little more than one-third of this 

 number, and when the supply of land far exceeded the 

 demand, there was something very plausible in this idea. 



Let us admit, therefore, that up to a very wide limit the 

 more land was sub-divided in England, the more populous she 

 would become, and the more food she would produce ; that 

 where vast estates belonged to one individual, in nine cases 

 out of ten he preferred to spend his spare time and capital in 

 the pleasures of town life ; and that on all such estates were 

 to be seen great waste tracts used, if used at all, as sheep- 

 walks. But it is difficult to agree with Young, when he goes 

 on to say, that, were a little farmhouse and a few necessary 

 buildings erected, and the property given to a stout labourer, 

 together with twenty acres of the most barren land, he would 

 soon make it fruitful.^ Unfortunately, he does not state who 

 was to give the land, whence the funds would be provided for 

 the buildings ; nor even how the stout labourer would find the 

 means to stock and improve this wilderness. This latter re- 

 quirement would probably exceed the value of the fee simple ; 

 and even supposing the landed proprietor were compelled by 

 law to erect the necessary buildings, and let the waste in small 

 twenty-acre lots, he would demand such a rent, as interest on 

 his outlay, as would have left the stout labourer very little 

 out of his annual profits to keep himself in that fine condition 

 oi' muscular development in which Young evidently pictures 

 him at starting. 



The lord's waste, as we foretold very early in this history, 

 had become an eyesore to the political economist ; there was, 

 however, no reason why he should wish to revert to another 

 institution of the Teutonic Mark, viz., the unequal and minute 

 subdivision of lands amongst the families of the community. 



This controvers}^ respecting the size of landed properties 



was no new one. It had been raging throughout Europe for 



many decades. The Marquis do Mirabeau, an adherent of the 



Physiocratic Philosophy, and father of the great Revolutionist, 



* Political Essays, etc., sub voc. " Agriculture." 



