86 
Small Holdings. 
small-proprietary system ; the yeomen had sacrificed — the 
labourers were unable to preserve — their former privileges. 
Now the rural grades are three : the landowners, the tenant 
farmers, and the labourers; the latter two classes having no 
local attachment beyond the profit that the tenant sees possible 
in his farm, and the price that the labourer may realise for his 
hire. 
But change has not been the lot of the working agricultural 
population solely ; the position of the landlords themselves has 
been subject to vital alterations. In these days the privileges 
which appertain to the ownership of land, while still as 
important, are no longer exclusive. The ranks of the 
magistracy are not open only to the possessor of the soil ; 
parliamentary honours are no longer his prerogative ; the sport 
of his domain has been subject to legislative interference, and 
sometimes he has been forced to lease it away through stress of 
pecuniary necessity. Political conditions have so altered that 
the wealthy among the mercantile class may now successfully 
combat his territorial influence in the race for parliamentary 
honours ; while the spread of education and strain of competition 
have displaced sentiment and increased his financial difficulties. 
These facts have led to a startling decrease in land values and 
to decline of proprietary influence. 
As to the farmers, though the rigidity of their covenants 
with their landlords has been relaxed, and their rents have 
become in many cases nearly nominal, yet the fierceness of 
present competition has tended to nullify both these advantages. 
While on the great virgin tracts of American soil agriculture 
performs its operations with a free hand, and railways and 
shipping encourage transport of produce by the minimum of 
charge for freightage, in England the farmer contends with 
an intrinsically less productive and less easily cultivated soil, 
and with the antagonism or indifference of the railway com- 
panies, which seek only how they may increase their rates, 
without consideration of those developments in agricultural 
production which a more liberal and enlightened policy might 
encourage. 
The distress of the farmers will ultimately further affect the 
labourers, and these already, as a body, have felt the effects of 
the consolidation of the farms. The wages of individuals up to the 
present have not declined, but the scope for labour through the 
consolidation has become diminished. It is inevitable that 
further tracts of land will cease to be cultivated, and labourers 
are aware of it. They recognise that they are gradually losing 
all their former chances of assuming a more substantial status. 
