32 Large and Small Holdings 



the ranks of the landed gentry 1 . The yeoman would at any time 

 find an eager purchaser, if not in the neighbouring landlord or large 

 farmer, then in some rich manufacturer or merchant, or in an anxious 

 speculator. 



Thus it would gradually be borne in upon him that it would serve 

 him better to grow corn as a large farmer than to produce live-stock 

 as a small proprietor. This was the view taken by every contemporary 

 who concerned himself with the question, as for example by Sinclair 2 

 and Arthur Young. The latter wrote that to prefer to cultivate a 

 small holding as proprietor rather than a large farm as tenant was to 

 engage in a very unprofitable business 3 . 



This question is of course one which still gives rise to lively 

 discussions in scientific circles. The views here put forward were 

 first published by the author in Conrad's Jahrbitchern for 1903. An 

 attempt to controvert them was made by Dr Hasbach in the Archiv 

 fiir Sozialwissenschaft, 1907, pp. 1-29. Whereas I began from the 

 assumption that a distinction must be made between the small owners 

 and the larger yeomen owning say 100 acres or upwards, Dr Hasbach 

 entirely overlooks this distinction. He is content to show that " the 

 yeomen" as such increased or decreased ; and he uses for this purpose 

 certain of the Reports from the Counties which I had expressly left 

 out of account on the ground that the "yeomen" to whom they referred 

 belonged to a higher social class than those with whom I was con- 

 cerned ; that they were to be reckoned partly even among the gentlemen 

 farmers, and that they certainly held medium or large holdings, not 

 small ones. Thus Dr Hasbach attempts to controvert my conclusions, 

 which expressly referred to small owners (Kleinbauern) only, by facts 

 concerning the yeomanry in general (Bauern). I never doubted that 

 yeomen having large properties prospered between 1765 and 1815. 

 They would find the rising corn-prices as profitable as did the large 

 farmers. But they must be clearly distinguished from the small owners 

 who went by the same name ; and only where the Reports from the 

 Counties made such a distinction possible can they be used for the 

 elucidation of the problem. Mr Johnson, in his Disappearance of the 



1 L. Brentano, Erbrechtspolitik, Stuttgart, 1899 ; and G. J. Shaw Lefevre, Agrarian 

 Tenures, 1893, pp. 7-8. Goldsmith's lines, written in 1770, may also be quoted : 



" The man of wealth and pride 



Takes up a space that many poor supplied, 

 Space for his lake, his park's extended bounds, 

 Space for his horses, equipage and hounds." 



2 Sinclair, Report on the Agricultural State of Scotland, Edinburgh, 1814, Vol. I, p. 185. 



3 In his Elements of Agriculture ^ an unprinted MS. in the British Museum. 



