A Short History of English Agriculture Part 29

[548] Dunc.u.mb, _General View of the Agriculture of Hereford_, p. 140.

[549] Tooke, _History of Prices_, ii. 4.

[550] _Farmer's Magazine_ (1817), p. 69.

[551] The duties were often evaded by smuggling; coasting vessels met the foreign corn s.h.i.+ps at sea, received their cargoes, and landed them so as to escape the duty.

[552] _Agricultural State of the Kingdom_, p. 5.

[553] _Observations for the Use of Landed Gentlemen_ (1817), p. 7.

[554] _Defence of the Farmers, &c._ (1814); and _Parliamentary Reports_, v. 72.

[555] _Agricultural State of the Kingdom_, p. 64.

[556] Ibid. p. 105.

[557] The agricultural horse tax was repealed in 1821, the tax on ponies and mules in 1823.

[558] There were some exceptions, but the overwhelming majority of replies to the letters were couched in the above spirit.

[559] At a time when landlords formed the majority in Parliament, it is curious to find a substantial farmer a.s.serting that 'the landed interest has been, since the corn law of 1773, held in a state of complete va.s.salage to the commercial and manufacturing, and the farmers of the country in a state very little superior to that of Polish peasants.'

[560] _Review of Western Department_, pp. 249, 250.

[561] Morton, _Cyclopaedia of Agriculture_, ii. 26.

CHAPTER XVIII

ENCLOSURE--THE SMALL OWNER

The war period was one of great activity in enclosure; from 1798 to 1810 there were 956 Bills; from 1811-20, 771.[562]

It must be remembered, however, that the number of Acts is not a conclusive test of the amount of enclosure, as there was a large amount that was non-parliamentary: by the princ.i.p.al landlord, and by freeholders who agreed to amicable changes and transfer, as at Pickering, in Yorks.h.i.+re.[563] Roughly speaking, about one-third of the Acts were for enclosing commonable waste, the rest for enclosing open and commonable fields and lands.[564] Owing to the expense an Act was only obtained in the last resource. It was also because of the expense[565] that many landlords desirous to enclose were unable to do so, and therefore devoted their attention to the improvement of the common fields. That agriculture benefited by enclosure there is no possible doubt, but it was attended with great hards.h.i.+ps. The landowner generally gained, for his rents increased largely. In twenty-three parishes of Lincolns.h.i.+re, for instance, his rents doubled on enclosure. But the expenses were so heavy that his gain was often very small, and sometimes he was a loser by the process. As for the farmers, the poorer ones suffered, for more capital was needed for enclosed lands, and the process generally was so slow, taking from two to six years before the final award was given, that many farmers were thrown out in the management of their farms, for they did not know where their future lands would be allotted. That the poor suffered greatly is indubitable: 'By nineteen Enclosure Acts out of twenty the poor are injured, in some cases grossly injured,' wrote Young in 1801.[566] In the Acts it was endeavoured to treat them fairly,[567] and allotments were made to them, or money paid on enclosure in lieu of their rights of common, or small plots of land; but the expense of enclosing small allotments was proportionately very great, generally too great, and they had to be sold, while the sums of money were often spent in the alehouse. The results of sixty-eight Acts were investigated in the eastern counties, with the result that in all but fifteen the poor were injured. It was generally found that they had lost their cows.

Its effect on the smallholder is well described by Davis in his _Report on Wilts_.[568] There, before enclosure, the tenants usually occupied yard-lands consisting of a homestead, 2 acres of meadow, 18 acres of arable, generally in eighteen or twenty strips, with a right on the common meadows, common fields and downs for 40 sheep, and as many cattle as the tenant could winter with the fodder he grew. The 40 sheep were kept by a common shepherd with the common herd, were taken every day to the downs and brought back every night to be folded on the arable fields, the rule being to fold 1,000 sheep on a 'tenantry'

acre (three-quarters of a statute acre) every night.[569] In breeding sheep regard was had to 'folding quality,' i.e. the propensity to drop manure only after being folded at night, as much as to quality and quant.i.ty of wool and meat. On enclosure the common flock was broken up. The small farmer had no longer any common to turn his horses on. The down on which he fed his sheep was largely curtailed, the common shepherd was abolished, and the farmer had too few sheep to enable him individually to employ a shepherd. Therefore he had to part with his flock. Having no cow common and very little pasture land he could not keep cows. In such circ.u.mstances the small farmer, after a few years, succ.u.mbed and became a labourer, or emigrated, or went to the towns.

In a pamphlet called _The Case of Labourers in Husbandry_, 1795, the Rev. David Davies said, 'by enclosure an amazing number of people have been reduced from a comfortable state of partial independence to the precarious condition of mere hirelings, who when out of work immediately come on the parish.' It has often been said that the poor were robbed of their share in the land by the landowners; but as a matter of fact it was the expense of securing the compensation allowed them, much greater in proportion on small holdings than on large, which went into the pockets of surveyors and lawyers, that did this.

It was also often through the farmer that the labourer was deprived of his land when he had retained an acre or two after enclosure. Wis.h.i.+ng to make the labourer dependent on him, he persuaded the agent to let the cottages with the farm, and the agent in order to avoid collecting a number of small rents consented. As soon as the farmer had the cottages he took the land from them and added it to his own. The peasant's losses engaged the serious attention of many landlords; near Tewkesbury, in 1773, the lord of the manor on enclosure, besides reserving 25 acres for the use of the poor, allowed land to each cottage sufficient to keep a horse or a cow, often added a small building, and gave stocks for raising orchards. Even some of the idlest were thereby made industrious, poor rates sank to 4d. in the , though the population increased, and the labourer always had for sale some poultry, or the produce of his cow, or some fruit.[570]

In 1800 the Board of Agriculture, composed almost entirely of landowners, noticing that the poor of Rutland and Lincolns.h.i.+re, who had land for one or two cows and some potatoes, had not applied for poor relief, offered a gold medal for the most satisfactory account of the best means of supporting cows on poor land, in a method applicable to cottagers.[571] Young recommended that in the case of extensive wastes every cottage on enclosure should be secured sufficient land on which to keep a cow, the land to be inalienable from the cottage and the owners.h.i.+p vested in the parish.

Lord Winchelsea[572] urged that a good garden should always go with a cottage, and set the example himself, one which has been generally followed in England by the greater landlords with much success. As may be imagined, these schemes or others similar to them were put into effect by the conscientious and energetic, but not by the apathetic and careless. Further, an Act was pa.s.sed in the fifty-ninth year of George III, which enabled parishes to lease or buy 20 acres of land for the employment of their poor.

In many cases, it must be allowed, the grazing of the commons was often worth very little. Let one man, it was said in 1795, put a cow on a common in spring for nothing, and let another pay a farmer 1s.

6d. a week to keep a cow of equal value on enclosed land. When both are driven to market at Michaelmas the extra weight of the latter will more than repay the cost of the keep, while her flow of milk meanwhile has been much superior.

The Committee on Waste Lands of 1795 attributed the great increase in the weight of cattle not only to the improved methods of breeding, but to their being fed on good enclosed lands instead of wastes and commons.[573] Even when commons were stinted they were in general overstocked, while disease was always being spread with enormous loss to the commoners. The larger holders, too, who had common rights, often crowded out the smaller.

There were often, as we have seen, a large number of 'squatters' on commons who had seized and occupied land without any legal t.i.tle. As a rule, if these people had been in possession twenty-one years their t.i.tle was respected; if not, no regard was very justly paid to them on enclosure, and they were deprived of what they had seized.

Eden wrote when enclosure was at its height; he was a competent and accurate observer, and this is his picture of the 'commoner':[574]

'The advantages which cottagers and poor people derive from commons and wastes are rather apparent than real; instead of sticking regularly to labour they waste their time in picking up a few dry sticks or in grubbing on some bleak moor. Their starved pig or two, together with a few wandering goslings, besides involving them in perpetual altercations with their neighbours, are dearly paid for in care, time, and bought food. There are thousands and thousands of acres in the kingdom, now the sorry pastures of geese, hogs, a.s.ses, half-grown horses, and half-starved cattle, which want but to be enclosed to be as rich as any land now in tillage.'

Enclosure worked an important social revolution. Before it the entirely landless labourer was rare: he nearly always had some holding in the common field or a right on the common pasture. With enclosure his holding or right had generally disappeared, and he deteriorated socially. It was very unfortunate, too, that when enclosure was most active domestic industries, such as weaving, decayed, and deprived the labourer and his family of a badly needed addition to his scanty income.

In its physical and moral effects the system of domestic manufactures was immensely preferable to that of the crowded factory, while economically it enabled the tillers of the soil to exist on farms which could not support them by agriculture alone.

This uprooting of a great part of the agricultural population from the soil by irresistible economic causes brought with it grave moral evils, and created divisions and antagonisms of interest from which we are suffering to-day.[575] If some such scheme as that of Arthur Young or Lord Winchelsea had been universally adopted, this blot on an inevitable movement might have been removed, and a healthy rural population planted on English soil. Another result followed, the labourer no longer boarded as a rule in his employer's house, where the farmer worked and lived with his men; the tie of mutual interest was loosened, and he worked for this or that master indifferently. One advantage, however, arose, in that, having to find a home of his own, he married early, but this was vitiated by his knowledge that the parish would support his children, on which knowledge he was induced to rely.

On the other hand, the farmer often rose in the social scale. With the abandonment of the handicaps and restrictions of the common-field system the efficient came more speedily to the front. It was they who had ama.s.sed capital, and capital was now needed more than ever, so they added field to field, and consolidated holdings.

The Act of 1845 did away with the necessity for private Enclosure Acts, still further reducing the expense; and since that date there have been 80,000 or 90,000 acres of common arable fields and meadows enclosed without parliamentary sanction, and 139,517 acres of the same have been enclosed with it,[576] besides many acres of commons and waste.

In the _Report of the Committee of Enclosures_ of 1844,[577] there is a curious description of the way in which common fields were sometimes allotted. There were in some open fields, lands called 'panes', containing forty or sixty different lands, and on a certain day the best man of the parish appeared to take possession of any lot he thought fit. If his right was called in question there was a fight for it, and the survivor took the first lot, and so they went on through the parish. There was also the old 'lot meadow' in which the owners drew lots for choice of portions. On some of the grazing lands the right of grazing sheep belonged to a man called a 'flockmaster', who during certain months of the year had the exclusive right of turning his sheep on all the lands of the parish.

Closely connected with the subject of enclosure is that of the partial disappearance of the small owner, both the yeoman who farmed his own little estate and the peasant proprietor. We have noticed above[578]

Gregory King's statement as to the number of small freeholders in England in 1688, no less than 160,000, or with their families about one-seventh of the population of the country. This date, that of the Revolution, marks an epoch in their history, for from that time they began to diminish in proportion to the population. Their number in 1688 is a sufficient answer to the exaggerated statement of contemporaries in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as to the depopulation caused by enclosures. Chamberlayne, in his _State of Great Britain_, published at about the same time as Gregory King's figures, says there were more freeholders in England than in any country of like extent in Europe: '40 or 50 a year is very ordinary, 100 or 200 in some counties is not rare, sometimes in Kent and in the Weald of Suss.e.x 500 or 600 per annum, and 3,000 or 4,000 of stock.' In the first quarter of the eighteenth century he was a prominent figure. Defoe[579] describes the number and prosperity of the Greycoats of Kent (as they were called from their homespun garments), 'whose interest is so considerable that whoever they vote for is always sure to carry it.'

Why has this st.u.r.dy cla.s.s so dwindled in numbers, and left England infinitely the weaker for their decrease? The causes are several; social, economic, and political. The chief, perhaps, is the peculiar form of Government which came in with the Revolution. The landed gentry by that event became supreme, the national and local administration was entirely in their hands, and land being the foundation of social and political influence was eagerly sought by them where it was not already in their hands.[580] At the same time the successful business men, whose numbers now increased rapidly from the development of trade, bought land to 'make themselves gentlemen'.

Both these cla.s.ses bought out the yeomen, who do not seem to have been very loath to part with their land. The recently devised system of strict family settlements enabled the old and the new gentlemen to keep this land in their families. The complicated t.i.tle to land made its transfer difficult and costly, so that there was little breaking up of estates to correspond with the constant buying up of small owners. To the smaller freeholder, as has been noticed, the enclosure of waste land did much harm, for it was necessary to his holding.

Again, smaller arable farms did not pay as well as large ones, so they tended to disappear. The decay of home industries was also a heavy blow to the smaller yeoman and the peasant proprietor.

Under this combination of circ.u.mstances many of the yeomen left the land. Yet though Young, less than a century after King and Davenant, said that the small freeholder had practically disappeared, there were at the end of the eighteenth century many left all over England, who however largely disappeared during the war and in the bad times after the war.[581] But a contrary tendency was at work which helped to replenish the cla.s.s. The desire of the Englishman for land is not confined to the wealthy cla.s.ses. At the end of the eighteenth century men who had made small fortunes in trade were buying small properties and taking the place of the yeomen.[582] In the great French War of 1793-1815, many yeomen, attracted by the high prices of land, sold their properties, but at the same time many farmers, attracted by the high prices of produce, which had often enriched them, bought land.[583] During the 'good times' of 1853-75 many small holders, like those of Axholme, noticed in the _Report_ of the Agricultural Commission of 1893, bought land.

A new cla.s.s of small owners also has sprung up, who, dwelling in or near towns and railway stations, have bought small freeholds. The return of the owners of land of 1872-6 gave the following numbers of those owning land in England and Wales[584]:

Total number of owners of: Number. Acreage.

less than one acre 703,289 151,171 1 acre and under 10 121,983 478,679 10 " 50 72,640 1,750,079 50 " 100 25,839 1,791,605 100 " 500 32,317 6,827,346

The great majority of the first cla.s.s here enumerated, those owning less than one acre, do not concern us, as they were evidently merely houses and gardens not of an agricultural character, but a large number of the second cla.s.s and most of the other three must have been agricultural, though unfortunately no distinction is made. It will be seen, therefore, that there were a considerable number of small owners in England in 1872, and their numbers have probably increased since. Many of them, however, are of the new cla.s.s mentioned above, and there appears to be no doubt that the number of the peasant proprietors and of the yeomen of the old sort has much diminished, especially in proportion to the growth of population.

FOOTNOTES:

[562] Cf. supra, p. 163.

[563] R. Marshall, _Rural Economy of Yorks.h.i.+re_, p. 17 et seq.

[564] Slater, _English Peasantry and Enclosure_, p. 7.

[565] It was stated in the _Report of the Committee on Enclosures_ (1844), p. 31, that the ordinary expense of obtaining an Enclosure Act was from 1,000 to 1,500. In 1814 the enclosure of three farms, amounting to 570 acres, including subdivision fences and money paid to a tenant for relinquis.h.i.+ng his agreement, cost the landlord nearly 4,000.--_Agricultural State of the Kingdom_ (1816), p. 116.