370 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



so that each possesses, on an average, less than one-seventh of 

 an acre. In Nottinghamshire, 9891 petty landowners rule over 

 1266 acres between them, possessing, on an average, about 

 one-eighth of an acre apiece. If we now look at the higher 

 end of the scale, the contrast is startling. Nearly three-fifths of 

 Northumberland is in the hands of forty-four proprietors, nearly 

 half is in the hands of twenty-six proprietors, and far more 

 than one-seventh is in the hands of one proprietor, the Duke 

 of Northumberland, who has also landed estates in other 

 counties. In Nottinghamshire, again, nearly two-fifths of the 

 whole acreage belongs to fourteen proprietors, and above one- 

 fourth to five proprietors. If the division of landed property 

 over the rest of England and Wales corresponded with the 

 division of landed property in Northumberland and Nottingham- 

 shire, one-half of the whole country would be in the hands of 

 about 1000 proprietors, and these proprietors, by virtue of their 

 family connections and social ascendency, would exercise a power 

 far more than commensurate with their acreage. 



The inference must be that primogeniture, operating for 

 many generations, has reduced the landed aristocracy of England 

 and Wales to a body even smaller than had been commonly 

 supposed, but that in those classes which do not maintain the 

 custom of primogeniture landed property is broken up into a 

 multitude of small parcels. The owners of such parcels are, 

 for the most part, not yeomen, but shop-keepers and artisans, 

 too humble and too dependent for their livelihood on urban 

 trade and industry to fill any perceptible space in the rural 

 economy of this country. That economy is so familiar to all of 

 us that we scarcely recognise the peculiar characteristics of it, 

 which foreigners notice as unique in modern Europe. To an 

 Englishman born and bred in the country, it appears the natural 

 order of things, if not the fixed ordinance of Providence, that in 

 each parish there should be a dominant resident landowner, 

 called a squire, unless he should chance to be a peer, invested 

 with an authority over its inhabitants, which, as Mr. Neate 

 contends, "the Norman lords, in the fulness of their power," 

 never had the right of exercising. This potenate, who, luckily 



