THE SMALL OWNER 261 



gave the following numbers of those owning land in England 

 and Wales l : 



Number. Acreage. 



Total number of owners of less than one acre . 703,289 151,171 

 j, I acre and under 10 121,983 478,679 



' I0 5 72,640 1,750,079 



,. So ioo 25,839 1,791,605 



I0 , 5 3 2 >3i7 6,827,346 



The great majority of the first class here enumerated, 

 those owning less than one acre, do not concern us, as they 

 were evidently merely houses and gardens not of an agri- 

 cultural character, but a large number of the second class and 

 most of the other three must have been agricultural, though 

 unfortunately no distinction is made. It will be seen, there- 

 fore, that there were a considerable number of small owners 

 in England in 1872, and their numbers have probably 

 increased since. Many of them, however, are of the new 

 class mentioned above, and there appears to be no doubt 

 that the number of the peasant proprietors and of the yeomen 

 of the old sort has much diminished, especially in proportion 

 to the growth of population. 



1 Parliamentary Accounts and Pa-pers, Ixxx. 21. The number of those 

 owning over 500 acres does not concern the small owner or the yeoman 

 class, but they were: from 500 acres to 1,000,4,799; from 1,000 to 2,000, 

 2,719; from 2,000 to 5,000, 1,815 from 5,000 to 10,000, 581 ; from 10,000 

 to 20,000, 223 ; from 20,000 to 50,000, 66 ; from 50,000 to 100,000, 3 ; 

 over 100,000, i. For the numbers of the 'holdings' of various sizes 

 in 1875 an d I 97 see below, p. 334. The term 'holdings', however, 

 includes freeholds and leaseholds . 



