154 RURAL ECONOMY OF ENGLAND. 



ling, which indicates a gigantic manufacturing production, 

 since coal is the material of first importance in all manu- 

 factures. 



Under this impulse, the population of Great Britain, 

 from ten millions in 1801, has risen to twenty in 1851 ; 

 that of Lancashire and the West Riding has tripled ; 

 there is perhaps no other place in the world where the 

 population is more dense. France can show nothing 

 like it : its total population during the same period has 

 increased not more than a fourth ; from twenty-seven 

 millions she has reached thirty-six, and her most populous 

 departments, those of the Rhone and the Nord, after the 

 Seine, which forms an exception, as well as London, count 

 only two of a population to the hectare. 



The more populous the country, the less proportion 

 does the agricultural population bear to the whole mass 

 of the people. Towards the end of the last century, the 

 return of the number of agriculturists in England, as 

 compared to the total population, might be about the 

 same as it is at present with us that is to say, about 

 sixty per cent. 



Since then, as population increased, this proportion has 

 become reduced ; not that the rural population has de- 

 creased, for it has, on the contrary, slightly increased, but 

 because the manufacturing population has increased in a 

 far greater ratio. In 1800, it was reckoned that there 

 were about nine hundred thousand agricultural families 

 in Great Britain ; now there may probably be a million. 

 In 1811, the number of non-agricultural families had 

 already reached one million six hundred thousand ; in 

 1821, two millions; in 1841, two and a half millions; 

 now it may be put down at five millions. In general, 

 the rural population amounts to a fourth of the whole ; 

 but in particular parts it is much less. In Middlesex 



