“I have myself taken very strong means to prevent it, for it so happens that my whole estate came out of lease in the year 1822, after the currency of a lease of fourteen years; and by consolidation of farms, and the destruction of cottages, I have diminished, upon my own property, the population to the extent of from 300 to 400 souls.”
“On how many acres?—On about 30,000 acres.” [This is at the rate of one in every 100 acres].
“What was the whole extent of population?—It was under 4000 before I reduced it.
“What became of those 300 or 400?—The greater part of them, being small tenants, were enabled to find farms on the estates of other proprietors, who pursued the opposite course of subdividing their estates for the purpose of obtaining higher nominal rents; others have become day labourers, and as day labourers, I have reason to know, they are more thriving than they were on my estate as small farmers, subject to a high rent, which their want of capital seldom enabled them to pay; two or three of these families went to America.
“Have you any out of work?—None entirely out of work, some only partially employed; but since the dispersion of this large mass of population, the supply of labour has not much exceeded the demand, for whenever I removed a family, I pulled down the house, and the parochial jealousy respecting settlements is an ample check on the influx of strangers.”
Similar to the influence of the large system of production in its displacement of labourers, as enabling a larger quantity of work to be executed by one establishment with a smaller number of hands than would be required were the amount of work to be divided into a number of smaller establishments,—similar to this mode of economizing labour, is that mode of work which, by altering the produce rather than the mode of production, and by substituting an article that requires less labour for one that required more, gets rid of a large quantity of labour, and, consequently, adds to the surplusage of labourers. An instance of this is in the substitution of pasturage for tillage. “Plough less and graze more,” says Sir J. Graham, the great economist of labour, simply because fewer people will be required to attend to the land. But this plan of grazing instead of ploughing was adopted in this country some centuries back, and with what effect to the labourers and the people at large, the following extract from the work of Mr. Thornton, on over-population, will show:—
“The extension of the woollen manufacture was raising the price of wool; and the little attendance which sheep require was an additional motive for causing sheep farming to be preferred to tillage. Arable land, therefore, began to be converted into pasture; and the seemingly-interminable corn fields, which, like those of Germany at this day, probably extended for miles without having their even surface broken by fences or any other visible boundaries, disappeared. After being sown with grass they were surrounded and divided by inclosures, to prevent the sheep from straying, and to do away with the necessity of having shepherds always on the watch. By these changes the quantity of work to be done upon a farm was exceedingly diminished, and most of the servants, whom it had been usual to board and lodge in the manor and farm-houses, were dismissed. This was not all. The married farm-servants were ousted from their cottages, which were pulled down, and their gardens and fields were annexed to the adjoining meadows. The small farmers were treated in the same way, as their leases fell in, and were sent to join the daily increasing crowd of competitors for work that was daily increasing in quantity.
“Even freeholders were in some instances ejected from their lands. This social revolution had probably commenced even before the prosperity of the peasantry had reached its climax; but in 1487 it attracted the notice of Parliament, and an Act was passed to restrain its progress; for already it was observed that inclosures were becoming ‘more frequent, whereby arable land, which could not be manured without people and families, was turned into pasture, which was easily rid by a few herdsmen;’ and that ‘tenancies for years, lives, and at will, whereupon most of the yeomanry lived, were turned into demesnes’[35]. In 1533[36], an Act was passed strongly condemning the practice of ‘accumulating’ farms, which it was declared had reduced ‘a marvellous multitude’ of the people to poverty and misery, and left them no alternative but to steal, or to die ‘pitifully’ of cold and hunger. In this Act it was stated that single farms might be found with flocks of from 10,000 to 20,000 sheep upon them; and it was ordained that no man should keep more than 2000 sheep, except upon his own land, or rent more than two farms.
“Two years later it was enacted that the king should have a moiety of the profits of land converted (subsequently to a date specified) from tillage to pastures, until a suitable house was erected, and the land was restored to tillage. In 1552, a law[37] was made which required that on all estates as large a quantity of land as had been kept in tillage for four years together at any time since the accession of Henry VIII., should be so continued in tillage. But these, and many subsequent enactments of the same kind, had not the smallest effect in checking the consolidation of farms. We find Roger Ascham, in Queen Elizabeth’s reign, lamenting the dispersion of families, the ruin of houses, the breaking up and destruction of ‘the noble yeomanry, the honour and strength of England.’ Harrison also speaks of towns pulled down for sheep-walks; ‘and of the tenements that had fallen either down or into the lord’s hands;’ or had been ‘brought and united together by other men, so that in some one manor, seventeen, eighteen, or twenty houses were shrunk.’[38]
“‘Where have been a great many householders and inhabitants,’ says Bishop Latimer, ‘there is now but a shepherd and his dog.’[39] And in a curious tract, published in 1581, by one William Stafford, a husbandman is made to exclaim, ‘Marry, these inclosures do and undo us all, for they make us pay dearer for our land that we occupy, and causeth that we can have no land to put to tillage; all is taken up for pasture, either for sheep or for grazing of cattle, insomuch that I have known of late a dozen ploughs, within less compass than six miles about me, laid down within this seven years; and where threescore persons or upwards had their livings, now one man, with his cattle, hath all. Those sheep is the cause of all our mischief, for they have driven husbandry out of the country, by which was increased before all kinds of victuals, and now altogether sheep, sheep, sheep.’[40] While numbers of persons were thus continually driven from their homes, and deprived of their means of livelihood, we need not be at a loss to account for the increase of vagrancy, without ascribing it to the increase of population.”