DECLINE OF LANDOWNING FARMERS IN ENGLAND 313 



and until 1820 prices had not been reduced very materially; 

 but from 1820 to 1836 prices were comparatively low. This 

 era of low prices, following the great prosperity of war times, 

 wrought disaster among all classes in England who were de- 

 pendent upon agriculture for an income. Tooke attributes 

 the high prices of one period and the low prices of the other to 

 the war, the currency, and the variations of the seasons, along 

 with a rapidly growing population engaged in manufactures 

 and commerce. The war made the importation of food danger- 

 ous and expensive and a somewhat debased currency, and bad 

 seasons at the close of the century, with an increasing demand 

 for food, resulted in extraordinarily high prices. On the other 

 hand, peace, a restored currency, and a series of excellent crops 

 after 1819 resulted in a great reduction in prices. 



The parliamentary report made by the Select Committee on 

 Agriculture for the year 1833 shows large numbers of landowning 

 farmers in the various parts of England at that date. Many 

 of these men held estates which had been handed down from 

 father to son for many generations, while large numbers had 

 purchased the land they occupied. But these yeomen farmers 

 were hard pressed and many had sold their land before 1833. 

 When we go carefully through the minutes of evidence given 

 before the committee we are especially impressed with the rapid 

 decrease in the number of landowning farmers, which had 

 taken place after the war, and before 1833. In Cumberland 

 and Westmoreland the number had " considerably diminished. " 

 Up to the war properties had continued long in the same families, 

 but in 1833, Mr. Blamire said he believed that since 181 5 a 

 greater change had taken place in the proprietorship of the 

 small farms than in any antecedent period of much longer 

 duration. In 1837, Blamire was again before the Committee, 

 and says : " The condition [of the landowning farmers in 

 Cumberland] is generally speaking most pitiable. At the 

 present moment they are as a body, in fact, ceasing to exist at 

 all." Mr. Merry, the owner and occupier of a three-hundred 

 acre farm in the North Riding of Yorkshire stated that in the 

 different dales in the district where he lived the farmers had 



