5O Large and Small Holdings 



agriculture after the year 1815. There was, first, a_diminished con- 

 sumption of meat and other animal products, and of fruit, vegetables, 

 etc., in consequence of the deteriorated standard of life of the 

 working classes : and secondly, an artificial stimulus was given to the 

 production of corn by the introduction of the high duties. The 

 peace, therefore, produced no change in the direction in which 

 agricultural production was moving. Equally little change appeared 

 in the matter of the unit of holding. 



For reasons already glanced at, the progress of the large farm 

 system cannot be so clearly traced after 1815 as before that date. 

 Individual examples have to suffice in place of more general 

 statements. But such examples can be adduced in plenty. Thus 

 on the celebrated Netherby estate in Cumberland, the number of 

 farmers was decreased by more than 50 per cent, between 1820 

 and 1850. "Fine farms of 300 and 400 acres, now occupied in one 

 holding by an enterprising tenant, were then (1820) held in seven or 

 eight separate possessions 1 ," wrote Caird in 1852. Again, it is 

 reported that after 1820 very many dairy-farms were transformed 

 into arable, and this would naturally be accompanied by an increase 

 in the number of acres in one hand 2 . Little allotments, too, in large 

 numbers were thrown into larger holdings 3 , the labourers being 

 deprived of their bits of land 4 . Where common-land was enclosed 

 and about 900,000 acres were enclosed by Act of Parliament between 

 1820 and 1850 the formation of large farms was always the im- 

 mediate result. When Exmoor Forest was enclosed, for instance, 

 farms of from 400 to 1000 acres, and even up to 2000 acres, were 

 formed 5 . Agricultural authorities recommended the landlords even 

 in the classic districts of small holdings to throw two or three farms 

 into one, as a matter of "good policy 6 ." The policy was so well 

 carried out that Caird, on his tour of 1850, found many districts in 



1 J. Caird, English Agriculture in 1850-1851, 1882, p. 352. 



2 Carmichael, Corn Laws, Edinburgh and London, 1838, p. 13. 



3 G. Buckland, On the Farming of Kent, in Journal R. A. S., Vol. VI (1845), p. 296. 



4 Cp. The Labourers' Friend, 1835, p. 31 : " I could point out parishes which fifty years 

 ago contained a body of poor who, I observed at that time, and for several years after, were 

 comfortable and happy, as to their temporal concerns : and this was chiefly owing to their 

 occupying their crofts, and orchards, and gardens close to their cottages. The parish of 

 Evestan, next to Potton, of which I was curate about fifty years ago... was circumstanced, as 

 to the poor, as above stated ; but within the last twenty years the cottages have been deprived 

 of all their accompaniments, which enabled the occupiers to keep some one, some two, and 

 some three cows, besides pigs and poultry." 



5 T. D. Acland and W. Sturge, The Farming of Somersetshire, 1851, p. 159. 



6 W. F. Karkeek, On the Farming of Cornwall, '^Journal R. A. S., Vol. VI (1845), p. 402. 



