312 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



this was of less permanent significance than the fact that many 

 of the men who had acquired wealth wished to acquire social 

 and political position ; and this could be done most readily 

 by becoming great landlords. This led many of the new men 

 of wealth to buy land and establish their families upon large 

 estates. This competition of rich men in the land market 

 resulted in high land values relatively to the rental value of 

 land, which made it all the more difficult for farmers to buy 

 land. In these various ways the reorganization of agriculture 

 in England at the close of the eighteenth century tended to 

 reduce the number of farmers who owned the land which they 

 cultivated, and to increase the numbers of great landlords and 

 of tenant farmers. 



Fluctuating land values and agricultural depressions hastened 

 the decline of landowning farmers. The wide discrepancy 

 between the rate of return on investment in land, and the rate 

 of interest which farmers had to pay on borrowed funds, was a 

 constant force tending to reduce landownership on the part of 

 farmers. The work of the agricultural depression was that of 

 speeding up the movement at times by reducing incomes and 

 forcing mortgaged owners to sell their farms. 



In the normal movement of affairs the farms passed from 

 father to son, but it was usual for the other members of the 

 family to be provided for. This usually meant that the son 

 who took the farm had to do so under heavy encumbrance. 

 It would appear that primogeniture and entail were institutions 

 affecting the large landlords, but little practiced among the 

 smaller owners, with whom the idea of more or less equal division 

 of property among all members of the family prevailed. There 

 were always many landowning farmers who were heavily in 

 debt and to this class depression often resulted in forced sale. 

 With wealthy lords always in the market for land these farms 

 were absorbed into the large estates. 



The depression in English agriculture from 1820 to 1836 

 resulted in a marked decline in landownership on the part of 

 English farmers. The first twelve years of the nineteenth 

 century were extremely prosperous times for English agriculture, 



