It was again proposed by Mr. Whitbread in the House of Commons that wages should be regulated by the price of provisions, and a minimum wage fixed; but there was enough sense in the House to reject this return to obsolete methods.

After March, 1801, prices commenced to fall, owing to a favourable season and the reopening of the Baltic ports, which allowed imports to come in more freely, for most of our foreign corn at this time came from Germany and Denmark. At the end of the year wheat averaged 75s. 6d., and with fair seasons it came down in the beginning of 1804 to 49s. 6d. Beef at Smithfield was from 4s. to 5s. 4d. a stone, mutton from 4s. to 4s. 6d.[530] This great drop in prices was accompanied by an increase in wages, the labourer from 1804 to 1810 getting on an average 12s. a week[531]; the cost of implements rose, so did the rate of interest, and the cry of agricultural distress in 1804 was heard everywhere. More protection was demanded by those interested in the land, and accordingly a duty of 24s. 3d. was imposed when the price was 63s. or under; a bounty was paid on export when it was 40s. or under; and wheat might be exported without bounty up to 54s.

However, 1804 was a very deficient harvest, owing to blight and mildew, and by the end of the year wheat was 86s. 2d. The harvests till 1808 were not as bad as that of 1804, but not good enough to lower the prices. Also, owing to the Berlin and Milan Decrees of Napoleon and the Non-intercourse Act of the United States of America, imports were restricted so that at the end of 1808 wheat was 92s. In this year the exports of wheat exceeded the imports, but it was due to the requirements of our army in Spain; and 1789 was the last year when exports were greater under normal circumstances.[532] 1809 was a bad harvest, so was 1810; in the former rot being very prevalent among sheep; and by August, 1810, hay was £11 a load and wheat 116s., only large imports (1,567,126 quarters) preventing a famine. Down wool was 2s. 1d. per lb., beef and mutton 8¹/₂d., cheese 8d.[533]

In 1811 the whole of July and part of August were wet and cold; and in August, 1812, wheat averaged 155s., the finest Dantzic selling at Mark Lane for 180s., and oats reached 84s. As our imports of corn then chiefly came from the north-west of Europe, which has a climate very similar to our own, crops there were often deficient from bad seasons in the same years as our own, and the price consequently high. On the other hand, it is a proof that produce will find the best market regardless of hindrances, that much of our corn at this time came from France. Corn in 1813 was seized on with such avidity that there was no need to show samples. As high prices had now prevailed for some time and were still rising, landlords and farmers jumped to the conclusion that they would be permanent; so that this is the period when rents experienced their greatest increase, in some cases having increased fivefold since 1790, and speculations in land were most general. Land sold for forty years' purchase, many men of spirit and adventure very different from farmers 'were tempted to risk their property in agricultural speculations',[534] and large sums were sunk in lands and improvements in the spirit of mercantile enterprise. The land was considered as a kind of manufacturing establishment, and 'such powers of capital and labour were applied as forced almost sterility itself to become fertile.' Even good pastures were ploughed up to grow wheat at a guinea a bushel, and much worthless land was sown with corn. Manure was procured from the most remote quarters, and we are told a new science rose up, agricultural chemistry, which, 'with much frivolity and many refinements remote from common sense, was not without great operation on the productive powers of land.'

Land jobbing and speculation became general, and credit came to the aid of capital. The larger farmers, as we have seen, were before the war inclined to an extravagance that amazed their older contemporaries; now we are told, some insisted on being called esquire, and some kept liveried servants.[535]

It is somewhat curious to learn that one of the drawbacks from which farmers suffered at this time was the ravages of pigeons, which seem to have been as numerous as in the Middle Ages, when the lord's dovecote was the scourge of the villein's crops. In 1813 there was said to be 20,000 pigeon houses in England and Wales, each on an average containing 100 pairs of old pigeons.[536]

Another pest was the large number of 'vermin', whose destruction had long before been considered important enough to demand the attention of the legislature.[537] Some parishes devoted large portions of their funds to this object; in 1786 East Budleigh in Devonshire, out of a total receipt of £20 1s. 8¹/₂d., voted £5 10s. for vermin killing. That now sacred animal the fox was then treated with scant respect, farmers and landlords paying for his destruction as 'vermin'[538]; the parish accounts of Ashburton in Devonshire, for instance, from 1761-1820 include payments for killing 18 foxes and 4 vixens, with no less than 153 badgers.

But the edifice of artificial prosperity was already tottering. After 1812 prices fell steadily,[539] the abundant harvest of 1813 and the opening of the continental ports accelerated this, and by December, 1813, wheat was 73s. 3d. Yet agriculture had made solid progress. The Committee of the House of Commons which inquired into the state of the corn trade in 1813 stated that through the extension of, and improvements in, agriculture the agricultural produce of the kingdom had increased one-fourth in the preceding ten years.[540] The high prices had attracted a large amount of capital to the land, so that there was very rapid and extensive progress, the methods of tillage were improved, large tracts of inferior pasture converted into arable, much, however, of which was soon to revert to weeds; there were many enclosures, and many fens, commons, and wastes reclaimed. But there was a reverse side to this picture of prosperity, even in the case of landlord and farmer. The burden of taxation was crushing; a contemporary writer, a farmer of twenty-five years standing,[541] wrote that, with the land tax remaining the same, there was a high property tax, house and window taxes were doubled, poor rates in some places trebled, highway, church, and constable rates doubled and trebled, and there were oppressive taxes on malt and horses, both nags and farm animals. A man renting a farm at £70 and keeping two farm-horses, a nag, and a dog, would pay taxes for them of £5 0s. 6d., a fourteenth of his rent.[542] Indeed, poor rates of 16s. and 20s. in the £ were known,[543] and they were occasionally more than the whole rent received by the landlord forty years before. A Devonshire landowner complained that seven-sixteenths out of the annual value of every estate in the county was taken from owners and occupiers in direct taxes.[544] And the Committee on Agricultural Depression of 1822 asserted that during the war taxes and rates were quadrupled.[545] Blacksmiths, whitesmiths, collar makers, ropers, carpenters, and many other tradesmen with whom the farmer dealt, raised their prices threefold; and it was openly asserted that the high prices of grain and stock were not proportionate to the increase of other prices. Much of the grass land broken up in the earlier years of the war was before the close in a miserable condition, for it was cropped year after year without manure, and was worn out. On the whole it may be doubted if the bulk of the farmers of England made large profits during the war; many no doubt profited by the extraordinary fluctuations in prices, and it was those men who 'kept liveried servants'; but there must have been many who lost heavily by the same means, and the rise of rent, taxes, rates, labour, and tradesmen's prices largely discounted the prices of corn and stock. The landowners at this period have generally been described as flourishing at the expense of the community, but their increased rents were greatly neutralized by the weight of taxation and the general rise in prices. A contemporary writer says that owing to the heavy taxes, even in the war time, he 'often had not a shilling at the end of the year.'[546]

The following accounts, drawn up in 1805,[547] do not show that farmers were making much money with wheat at 10s. a bushel:

Account of the culture of an acre of wheat on good fallow land:

And on a farm on good land in the same county the following would be the annual balance sheet at the same date:

According to this the farmer did little more than pay rent, interest on capital, and get a living. Yet prices of what he had to sell had gone up greatly: wheat in Herefordshire in 1760 was 3s. a bushel, in 1805, 10s.; butcher's meat in 1760 was 1¹/₂d. a lb., in 1804, 7d.; fresh butter 4¹/₂d. in 1760, 1s. 3d. in 1804; a fat goose in Hereford market in 1740, 10d.; 1760, 1s.; 1804, 4s.; a couple of fowls in 1740, 6d.; 1760, 7d.; 1804, 2s. 4d.[548] The winter of 1813-4 was extraordinarily severe, and the wheat crop was seriously injured, but the increased breadth of cultivation, a large surplus, and great importations kept the price down. Many sheep, however, were killed by the hard winter, which also reduced the quality of the cattle, so that meat was higher in 1814 than at any previous period.[549] At Smithfield beef was 6s. to 7s. a stone, mutton 7s. to 8s. 6d. With the peace of 1814 the fictitious prosperity came to an end, a large amount of paper was withdrawn from circulation, which lowered the price of all commodities, and a large number of country banks failed. The first sufferers were the agricultural classes, who happened at that time to hold larger supplies than usual, the value of which fell at once; the incomes of all were diminished, and the capital of many annihilated.[550] At the same time the demand for our manufactures from abroad fell off; the towns were impoverished, and bought less from the farmer.

The short period of war in 1815 had little effect on prices, and in January, 1816, wheat was 52s. 6d., and the prices of live stock had fallen considerably. In 1815 protection reached its highest limit, the Act of that year prohibiting import of wheat when the price was under 80s. a quarter, and other grain in proportion.[551] However, it was of no avail; and in the beginning of 1816 the complaints of agricultural distress were so loud and deep that the Board of Agriculture issued circular letters to every part of the kingdom, asking for information on the state of agriculture.

According to the answers given, rent had already fallen on an average 25 per cent. and agriculture was in a 'deplorable state.'[552] Bankruptcies, seizures, executions, imprisonments, were rife, many farmers had become parish paupers. Rent was much in arrear, tithes and poor rates unpaid, improvements generally discontinued, live stock diminished; alarming gangs of poachers and other depredators ranged the country. The loss was greater on arable than on grass land, and 'flock farms' had suffered less than others, though they had begun to feel it heavily.

All classes connected with the land suffered severely; the landlords could not get many of their rents; the farmer's stock had depreciated 40 per cent.[553]; many labourers, who during the war had been getting from 15s. to 16s. a week and 18s. in summer,[554] were walking the country searching for employment. Many tenants threw up their farms, and it was often noticed that landlords, 'knowing very little of agriculture and taken by surprise,' could not manage the farms thrown on their hands, and they went uncultivated. Some farmers paid up their rent to date, sold their stock, and went off without any notice; others, less scrupulous, drove off their stock and moved their household furniture in the night without settling.[555]

Farmers and landowners were asked to state the remedies required. Some asked for more rent reduction and further prohibition of import, but the most general cry was for the lessening of taxation.

A Herefordshire farmer[556] stated that in 1815 the taxes on a farm of 300 acres in that county were:

The parish of Kentchurch, in Herefordshire, paid in direct taxes a greater sum than the lands of the whole parish could be let for.

Such is the picture of agriculture after twenty years of high prices and protection.[558] One may naturally ask, if much money had been made by farmers during these years, where had it all gone to that they were reduced at the first breath of adversity to such straits? Some allowance must be made for the fact that these accounts come from those interested in the land, who were always ready to make the most of misfortune with a view to further protection, and the farmer is a notorious grumbler. It seems, however, that most landlords and tenants believed that the high prices would last for ever, and lived accordingly, and, as we have seen, many made no profit at all because of their increased burdens. As a matter of fact, both were grumbling because prices had come back to their natural level after an unnatural inflation.[559]

Hemp at this date was still grown in Lincolnshire and Somerset, and Marshall tells us that in 1803 there was a considerable quantity of hemp grown in Shropshire.[560] In that county there was a small plot of ground, called 'the hemp-yard,' appendant to almost every farm-house and to many of the best sort of cottages. Whenever a cottager had 10 or 15 perches of land to his cottage, worth from 1s. 6d. to 2s. 6d. a year, with the aid of his wife's industry it enabled him to pay his rent. A peck of hempseed, costing 2s., sowed about 10 perches of land, and this produced from 24 to 36 lb. of tow when dressed and fit for spinning. A dozen pounds of tow made 10 ells of cloth, worth generally about 3s. an ell. Thus a good crop on 10 perches of land brought in £4 10s. 0d., half of which was nett profit. The hemp was pulled a little before harvest, and immediately spread on grass land, where it lay for a month or six weeks. The more rain there was the sooner it was ready to take off the grass. When the rind peeled easily from the woody part, it was, on a dry day, taken into the house, and when harvest was over well dried in fine weather and dressed, being then fit for the tow dresser, who prepared it for spinning. After the crop of hemp the land was sown with turnips, a valuable resource for the winter.

Since 1815 little hemp or flax has been grown in England[561]; in 1907 there were, according to the Agricultural Returns, 355 acres of flax grown in England, and hemp was not mentioned.

CHAPTER XVIII

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 principal landlord, and by freeholders who agreed to amicable changes and transfer, as at Pickering, in Yorkshire.[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 hardships. The landowner generally gained, for his rents increased largely. In twenty-three parishes of Lincolnshire, 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 quantity 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 circumstances the small farmer, after a few years, succumbed 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. Wishing 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 Lincolnshire, 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 ownership 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 passed 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 title. As a rule, if these people had been in possession twenty-one years their title 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, asses, half-grown horses, and half-starved cattle, which want but to be enclosed to be as rich as any land now in tillage.'

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 amassed 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 Sussex £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 sturdy class 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 classes 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 title 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 circumstances 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 class. The desire of the Englishman for land is not confined to the wealthy classes. 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 class 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]: