14 WESTMORLAND AGRICULTURE, 1800-1900 



Humble and unaspiring, they afford few instances of a rapid increase 

 of fortune. Wliatever patrimonial estates they inherit, they are 

 generally transmitted to the eldest son, without much in addition or 

 any considerable diminution." Dickinson, writing in 1852, said: " In 

 this class are comprised ... the race of men so greatly prized as 

 the stay of the country in generations gone by. These have been 

 described as the contented race who had no ambition or emulation to 

 spur them to step out of the beaten track of their fathers. But this 

 description is now altogether erroneous. It is from the savings of 

 this class that the younger sons have been educated and spread over 

 the kingdom as clergymen and in other professions, and the British 

 colonies in all parts of the world have numbers of the progeny of 

 statesmen among them." 



The opinions of Bailey and CuUey on this class of occupiers is not 

 very flattering to their methods of agriculture. They report to the Board 

 of Agriculture in 1794 : " Agriculture, we presume, is little indebted for 

 its advancement to the small proprietors (provincially statesmen) who 

 seem to inherit with the estates of their ancestors, their notions of culti- 

 vating them, and are almost as much attached to the one as to the 

 other ; their little estates, which they cultivate with their own hands, 

 produce almost every necessary article of food ; and clothing they in 

 part manufacture themselves ; they have a high character for sincerity 

 and honesty, and probably few people enjoy more ease and humble 

 happiness." This state of ownership has largely passed away with the 

 century, and as a class the statesmen cannot be said to exist to-day. 

 This was anticipated by Nicolson and Burn when they wrote, " Every 

 man lives upon his own small tenement, and the practice of accu- 

 mulating farms hath not yet here made any considerable progress." 

 A few years later, in 1794, Pringle wrote to the Board of Agriculture : 

 " This class of men is daily decreasing. It may be questioned whether 

 the agriculture of the county will not be improved as the landed 

 property of it becomes less divided." The policy thus outlined by 

 Pringle, whether by the necessity of the existing conditions or of set 

 purpose by the richer proprietors, has become an accomplished fact. 

 In 1868 C. Webster wrote, " The old class of statesmen are nearly 

 extinct. The tendency has all along been to render the already large 

 landowners larger still, while the small owners are gradually dis- 



