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in demand than ever for meat. In various ways, therefore, the improvements in agriculture mark a very important advance, and the close of the eighteenth century witnessed changes in the field as great in their way as those in the factory.

§ 243. The Agricultural Revolution.

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The new agriculture, indeed, brought with it a revolution as important in its way as the Industrial Revolution. One of the chief features of the change-the enclosureshas been already commented upon. The enclosure of the common fields was beneficial,2 and to a certain extent justifiable, for the tenants paid rent for them to the lord of the manor. But it was effected at a great loss to the smaller tenant, and when his common of pasture was enclosed as well, he was greatly injured, while the agricultural labourer was permanently disabled. Whereas between 1710 and 1760 only some 300,000 acres had been enclosed, in the period between 1760 and 1843 nearly seven million underwent the same process.* The enclosure system, however, was only part of a great change that was passing over the country; it was but another sign of the introduction of capitalist methods into modern industry. We have already noted the growth of the capitalist element in manufactures, and have seen how the small manufacturer died out, while his place was taken by the owner of one or more huge factories, who employed hundreds of men under him; and now we see very much the same process in agriculture. The small farmer and the yeoman disappear, and the large capitalist takes his place. The substitution of large for small farms is, in fact, one of the chief signs of the Agricultural Revolution.5 It was both the cause and the effect of the enclosures;

1 Above, pp. 274, 275; also Prothero, Pioneers, pp. 66-74.

2 Above, p. 275; and Toynbee, Industrial Revolution, p. 89.

3 Ib., p. 89.

Ib., p. 89; cf. Prothero, Pioneers, p. 71, who mentions that from 1777 to 1793 only 599 Enclosure Acts were passed, but from 1793 to 1809 no less than 1052 Acts, involving some four-and-a-half million acres.

5 Toynbee, Industrial Revolution, p. 89.

and, of course, as large farms could only be worked by men possessed of large capital, it marks very clearly the growth of capitalist methods.1 It should be noted, however, that the reason for enclosures in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was quite different from that which caused them in the sixteenth century. The earlier were for the sake of pasture, and the later to get land for tillage. That the changes induced by the new system have been beneficial to agriculture no one will attempt to deny, just as no one can dispute the benefits conferred upon industry by the use of machinery; but, at the same time, one cannot be blind to the fact that these great industrial changes, both in manufactures and agriculture, brought a great amount of misery with them, both to the smaller employers and the mass of the employed. "The change in agriculture brought with it a new agricultural and social crisis more severe than that of the Tudor period. The [eighteenth] century closed with the miseries that resulted from enclosures, consolidation of holdings, and the reduction of thousands of small farmers to the ranks of wage-dependent labourers. The result of the crisis was to consolidate large estates, extinguish the yeomanry and peasant proprietary, to turn the small farmers into hired labourers, and to sever the connection of the labourer from the soil."3 In a comparatively short time the face of rural England was completely changed; the common fields, those quaint relics of primi tive times, were almost entirely swept away, and the large enclosed fields of to-day, with their neat hedgerows and clearly-marked limits, had taken their places. There is a far wider difference between the rural England of the beginning of the nineteenth century, and the beginning of the seventeenth or even eighteenth, than between the England of William of Orange and of William of Normandy.

1 Porter, Progress of the Nation, i. 181, remarks how both in England and Scotland "the tendency has been to enlarge the size of farms, and to place them under the charge of men possessed of capital."

2 Prothero, Pioneers, p. 72.

3 Prothero, Agriculture in England, in Dict. Pol. Econ., p. 29, and Pioneers of English Farming, p. 73.

The improvements in agriculture, the enclosures, the consolidation of small into large farms, and the appearance of the capitalist farmer are, then, the chief signs of the Agricultural Revolution. They form an almost exact parallel to the inventions of machinery, the bringing together of workers in factories, the consolidation of small bye-occupations into larger and more definite trades, and the appearance of the capitalist millowner in the realm of manufacturing industry. Concurrently with these changes we notice certain contemporaneous events which, though not first causes,1 were still important factors in the general Revolution. These are the increase of population, the growth of speculative farming by capitalists, and the high prices of grain. Upon the increase of population we have already 2 commented, and it is needless to point out how it encouraged agriculture by enlarging the home market for food products. The second and third facts-speculative farming and high prices of grain-are to some extent connected, and were due not only to the scarcity which marked the harvests at the close of the eighteenth century, and the consequent pressure of population upon subsistence, but also to the artificial conditions created by the Corn Laws. Upon the Corn Laws we shall have something to say almost immediately; here it should be remarked that the bad harvests of 1765 to 1774, and the irregularity of the seasons from 1775 onwards, caused exceedingly violent fluctuations in the price of corn, and these fluctuations were the opportunity of the speculative capitalist farmer. In March 1780, wheat was 38s. 3d. a qr., at Michaelmas of that year 48s., and in March 1781 it rose to 56s. 11d.5 Now these violent fluctuations of price gave to those who could hold large stocks of corn the opportunity of gaining enormous profits, while the smaller men, who either worked in common fields or had small

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1 It is rather strange that Dr Cunningham (Growth of Industry, ii. 480) should say that these three minor facts were the chief causes "whereby the whole character of English agriculture was changed."

2 Above, p. 349. 3 Cf. Prothero, Pioneers of English Farming, p. 83. 4 Cunningham, Growth of Industry, ii. 476, 477.

5 Tooke, Prices, i. 76.

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separate holdings, were generally compelled to realise their corn immediately after harvest, and consequently suffered severely when prices were low.1 In 1779, for instance, many farmers were ruined by low prices, and yet in other years prices were often excessively high. The nature of these violent fluctuations, caused partly by real scarcity and partly by the Corn Laws, was aggravated during the war by the fact that hardly any foreign supplies of corn were available owing to the interruption of commerce; and in any case there was not as yet that enormous import of foreign grain which to-day serves to steady the prices of the home market. But these alternations of high and low prices caused an amount of speculation which brought farming into the same category as the uncertainties of the Stock Exchange, and while it often brought huge profits to those who had capital enough to wait, led many of the smaller farmers into ruin. Thus the disappearance of small farms, already begun, was largely accelerated, and an important feature of the Agricultural Revolution became still more strongly marked.

On the average, however, we

find that the prices of grain, apart from these fluctuations, were steadily rising, and grain-growing continued to be very profitable to those who could afford to disregard sudden alterations in prices. The reason for the profits of agriculture at this period we can now examine.

$244. The Stimulus caused by the Bounties.

The real commencement of the system of imposing heavy protective duties upon the importation of grain from abroad in the interest of the landowners was the Act 22 Charles II., c. 13. This Acts practically prohibited import except when wheat was at famine prices, as it happened to be in 1662, when it was 62s. 91d. a quarter, the ordinary average price being 41s. But it did not reach this price again for many years afterwards. The Government of 1688, not

1 Cunningham, u. 8., ii. 477-479.

2 Ib., ii. 477.

3 By this law 16s. a qr. was imposed on wheat as long as it was at and below 53s. 4d., and 8s. a qr. when it was between 53s. 4d. and 80s. ; Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Bk. IV., ch. v. (Vol. II., p. 113).

Rogers, Hist. Agric., v. 276, and cf. ch. vii. of Vol. V.

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content with the foregoing protective measure, added a bounty of 5s. per qr. upon the export of corn from England. But the effect of this bounty was not felt for several years, for, fortunately, soon after the passing of the Bounty Act, a series of plentiful harvests occurred, and corn was very cheap. There were consequently loud outcries from the landlords about agricultural distress, which merely meant that the people at large were enjoying cheap food. The aim of the bounty on corn had been to raise prices by encouraging its export, and thus rendering it scarcer and dearer in England. As a matter of fact, it had the opposite effect, for it served as a premium upon which the wheatgrower could speculate, and thus induced him to sow a larger breadth of his land with wheat. The premium upon production caused producers to grow more than the market required, and so prices fell. Thus, happily for the consumer, the Corn Laws and the bounty were harmless during the greater part of the eighteenth century,5 for farmers competed one against the other sufficiently to keep down prices, and with a small population the supply was generally sufficient to meet the demand. But the inevitable Nemesis of protective measures came at the end of the century, when population was growing with unexampled rapidity, and required all the corn it could get. Then the prices of corn rose to a famine pitch, while the duty upon its importation, even when it was lowered, prevented it coming into the country in sufficient quantities.

By a law of 1773, however, the importation of foreign wheat was allowed when English wheat was more than 48s. per qr.6 In 1791 a duty of 24s. 3d. was imposed as long as English wheat was less than 50s. a qr.;7 if English wheat was over 50s. the duty was 2s. 6d. The landed 1 The 1 William and Mary, § 1, c. 12.

2 Rogers, Economic Interpretation, p. 377.

3 Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Bk. IV., ch. v. (Vol. II., 115).

4 Rogers, Economic Interpretation, p. 378, who instances the similar result in the case of the premium on beet sugar abroad.

5 Ib., p. 378.

6 The 13 Geo. III., c. 43; cf. Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Bk. IV., ch. v. (Vol. II., p. 119).

7 By the 31 Geo. III., c. 30. .

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