68 Large and Small Holdings 



west the moist climate gave the advantage to pasture 1 . Caird, writing 

 in 185 1, says the same 2 . Accordingly it was the north and east which 

 profited most and earliest from the rising corn-prices. Norfolk, 

 Suffolk, Essex, Lincolnshire and their neighbours were the counties 

 which continually met with the approval of Arthur Young for their 

 rapid extension of arable and application of the newest agricultural 

 methods. The natural qualities of the different parts of the country, 

 and their varying suitability for arable or pasture would of course 

 affect the question of the unit of holding, since this was dependent on 

 the agricultural use to which the land was to be put. In the eastern 

 counties climatic conditions favoured the rapid substitution of arable 

 for pasture. Accordingly the large farm system, as most suited to 

 arable farming, was also most rapidly developed in the east. In the 

 west, on the contrary, the extension of the arable area met with great 

 hindrances, in spite of the rising price of corn, since here the natural 

 conditions were all in favour of pasture. Therefore the small farm 

 held its own longer against the large. In this way certain units of 

 holding became characteristic of certain geographical areas. Robertson 

 wrote at the end of the eighteenth century that " allowing for many 

 local and accidental exceptions, large farms... are chiefly to be met 

 with in the eastern shires of England ; small farms... in those of the 

 west 3 ." The same conditions continued in the nineteenth century, as 

 Caird's investigations proved 4 . Not that the west of England had 

 not felt the movement for the enlargement of holdings very consider- 

 ably. It will be remembered that various writers noticed that in years 

 when corn-prices were specially high farmers did not hesitate to break 

 up the most beautiful grass-lands, nor landlords to throw little pasture 

 farms into large arable holdings. What is true is merely that the 

 process of consolidation was not carried so far on the grass-lands of 

 the west as on the arable farms of the east; more small holdings 

 survived in the western counties, and accordingly there the average 

 size of farms was less 5 . It might even be said that where the natural 

 conditions for corn-growing were altogether absent, there the large 

 farm never made its appearance. But such districts were few, and 

 the cases in which small farms succeeded in maintaining their exist- 

 ence over a whole district were few also. It happened only in distant 



1 Th. Robertson, Outlines of the General Report on the Size of Farms^ 1796, p. 2. 



2 Caird, English Agriculture, p. 481. 



3 Robertson, op. cit. p. 3; cp. also p. 17. 



4 Caird, English Agriculture, pp. 481 f. 



6 Caird reckons the average holding at about 430 acres in the east, and 220 in the west. 



