Estates here being small, the farms are small also; and they could not well be large in such a hilly country—haulage would be too costly, if a farm went over many ridges and coombes. Usually they are too small, and two or three might be thrown into one, one set of buildings serving for the whole, likewise one set of implements, and fewer horses—six horses have sufficed, where three farmers had each been keeping three. Even in districts where estates are large, and ground is flat, the farms are seldom large enough to give the best results. The ideal is the largest area that can possibly be worked from one homestead; and in some districts that may be very large indeed. No doubt, the latifundia were not a success; but that was due to slavery, not to size. Here in England our countryfolk would make a better stock as labourers on big estates than in starvation on small-holdings.
The labourer has certainly fared badly in the past. He grew the dear loaf, and never had a bite at it. But, when economists go writing of “the hungry ’forties,” they should remember that there were such things as trout and salmon, hares and rabbits, partridges and pheasants.
My grandfather writes to my father, 3 December 1844:—“I was told yesterday at Moreton that many travellers now give their horses a portion of wheat flour. Some are too scrupulous to do it: but the labourer would say Why give barley, as that is my food, and the Scotch and Irish may say Why give oats.” He writes a few days later, 15 December 1844:—“I had some conversation with the Lustleigh parson yesterday. He said we had no poor here, and the labourers were better off than where he came from.”—He had just left a living in Norfolk.—“There the wages were less, and they never tasted animal food from one year to another, but here they all managed to salt in a pig.”
He writes on 2 December 1849:—“Bad as times are, I have known them far worse under Protection.... Such was the distress among farmers then that labourers were put up to auction by the parish authorities, and hired for 6d. to 9d. per day.” And on 7 February 1850:—“There is no grumbling among the labourers, for now they have a cheap loaf, and are able to get a bit of meat to eat with it.... Besides under Free Trade they get salt, sugar, tea, coffee, etc., at a much lower rate than formerly, when their wages were but a half or a third.”
On 13 July 1851 he writes:—“I see a vast improvement in agriculture in this neighbourhood since Free Trade came in.... Protection did but foster indolence.” Fifty years later, when Protection was allied with Tariff Reform, an ardent Liberal said to me:—“No, ’t ain’t no tariffs and ’tection that they farmers need: ’t be nothin’ but lime and doong.” And certainly the land was starved.
My grandfather was converted to Free Trade somewhere about 1817 or 1818, but I do not know exactly when or how. He writes on 3 June 1843:—“I have been a Free Trader for more than five-and-twenty years.” And on 28 January 1844:—“I almost stood alone in Moreton as a Free Trader about five-and-twenty years ago.” As for the other party, he writes on 25 November 1849:—“Protection is substituted for Church & State and King & Constitution, and what they will have next I am at a loss to say.” He was a Liberal then; but the party went beyond his principles, and my brother writes from here, 4 July 1868:—“Grandpapa now calls himself a Conservative, and makes dire prophecies of the political future of England.”
Lord John Russell was the only politician whom he altogether trusted. There was some slight acquaintance; and Lord John gave my father a very nice desk upon his coming of age. My father used it always, and I have it still, not much the worse for wear, but somewhat damaged by burglars on one of their visits to our house in town.
Writing to my father on 25 January 1846, my grandfather says:—“Agricultural labourers are very scarce: most of the young and able bodied are gone on the railways.” Men got better pay as navvies than they had ever got in agriculture. Better pay meant better food; and the navvies developed into finer men than anyone had seen before—at least, old people always told me so. I fancy this displacement of labour had more effect on wages and employment than the change from Protection to Free Trade.
Writing on 8 March 1846, he says:—“I do not think many of the agriculturalists are prepared for the very great changes that the railways will make.” But those great changes never came, as the agriculturalists never grasped the situation. So long as transport was difficult, each district had to grow nearly everything that it required. When transport was made easy, each district should have grown what it grew best. Here in the South Hams there was quite the best cream in England, and about the best cider, and also excellent mutton. Had people kept to things like these, and laid down all their arable land to grass, they would have saved far more on agricultural buildings, implements and horses, than they would have spent in getting arable products from a distance. And they would hardly have felt the depression that began in 1878, as that scarcely touched these things.
Being short-sighted, they neglected their orchards, and grew careless of their cider-making, till Devonshire cider was outclassed by Hereford. And now they are ruining the cream by using separators. Of course, it is cream made in Devonshire, but it is not what was known as Devonshire cream. The stuff is not worth eating; but I suppose people will go on eating it as Devonshire cream, just as they go on drinking the wines of well-known growers, whose vineyards were exhausted years ago.