1 84 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



when inextricably intermingled with the great body of tenant 

 farmers or voters." Accepting and emphasizing the first part of 

 this criticism, Hermann Levy attributes the decline of independ- 

 ent farming not to the low price of grain after 1813 but to its 

 high price from 1760 to 181 3. The small farmer, then producing 

 live stock for the market rather than grain, derived no advantage 

 from the advancing price of the latter, was, indeed, at times 

 forced to buy. Levy's propositions have in turn been subjected to 

 severe criticism by Hasbach. His discussion of the independent 

 farmer in "Die englischen Landarbeiter " has been greatly extended 

 in the revised English translation of that work and still more in 

 an article in the Archiv fiir Sozialwissenschaft. In the main he 

 agrees with Rae, criticising chiefly the latter's interpretation of the 

 term " yeoman " and his neglect of enclosures. For Hasbach the 

 yeoman class includes large as well as small farmers. He believes 

 that yeomen were still numerous at the close of the eighteenth 

 century ; Rae makes " a valuable point in ascribing their downfall 

 to the period after 18 15." As the more prosperous of them, how- 

 ever, passed into the ranks of the gentry from the sixteenth cen- 

 tury onwards, the upper layer of the yeomanry vanished. The 

 lower layer, differing little from cottagers, suffered like them from 

 the enclosures of the eighteenth century. Arnold Toynbee, some- 

 what earlier, had concluded that " the process of the disappearance 

 (of the small freeholder) has been continuous from about 1700 to 

 the present day (but) ... it was not until about 1760 that the 

 process of extinction became rapid." Mantoux in his study of the 

 Industrial Revolution thinks that the yeomanry was already doomed 

 before 1780, when the new industry gave the final blow. " Son 

 sort . . . n* a ete qu'un episode remarquable d'un drame plus 

 vaste. ..." This drama was the enclosure movement which 

 reached its height in the second half of the eighteenth century 

 when "" le nombre des fermes ... a beaucoup diminue." 



To a ^eat extent the entire discussion has hinged upon the 

 county reports to the Board of Agriculture made at the close of 

 the eighteenth century and upon the contemporary writings of 

 William Marshall and Arthur Young, All have much to say about 

 the surviving yeomanry. Difficulties arise, however, from the 



