History of Agricultural Rent in England 31 



digression. Young, however, gives an 

 account of the rise in rent in England at 

 the end of the eighteenth century, and he 

 shows by actual cases that whilst the old- 

 fashioned farmers could not pay their rents 

 in spite of the labour of the other members 

 of their family, and often themselves, at 

 other industries (such as spinning and 

 weaving), the new farmers were taking the 

 land at higher rents and earning large 

 profits in addition. The small farmers were 

 again hit by the industrial revolution which 

 displaced the home industries by machinery 

 in factories. 



It is no doubt true that, at the end of the 

 eighteenth century and the beginning of the 

 nineteenth, the very great rise that took 

 place in rents, sometimes fivefold, was not 

 due entirely to improvements and the 

 increase of produce. There was also the 

 succession of bad seasons, and as the 



