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]: 

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 class 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 class 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 class 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 Yorkshire, 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 L1,000 to L1,500.  In 1814 the enclosure of three farms, amounting to 570 acres, including subdivision fences and money paid to a tenant for relinquishing his agreement, cost the landlord nearly L4,000.—­Agricultural State of the Kingdom (1816), p. 116.

[566] Enquiry into the Propriety of Supplying Wastes to the better Support of the Poor, p. 42.

[567] The usual clause in Enclosure Acts stated that the land should be ’allotted according to the several and respective rights of all who had rights and interests’ in the enclosed property, and expenses were to be borne ’in proportion to the respective shares of the people interested’.

[568] pp. 8 et seq.  Slater, op. cit. p. 113.

[569] Cf.  Marshall’s account of the common-field townships in Hampshire at the end of the eighteenth century.  Each occupier of land in the common fields contributed to the town flock a number of sheep in proportion to his holding, which were placed under a shepherd who fed them and folded them on all parts of the township.  A similar practice was observed with the common herd of cows, which were placed under one cowherd who tended them by day and brought them back at night to be milked, distributing them among their respective owners, and in the morning they were collected by the sound of the horn.—­Rural Economy of Southern Counties, ii. 351.