[570] Report of Committee on Waste Lands (1795), p. 204.  Ground was frequently left by the Acts for the erection of cottages for the poor, and special allotments were made to Guardians for the use of the poor, in addition to the land allotted to all according to their respective claims.  Can any one doubt that if there had been a systematic robbery of the smaller holders on enclosure they would not have risen ’en masse’?

[571] Slater, op. cit. p. 133.

[572] Agricultural State of the Kingdom (1816), p. 8.

[573] Report, p. 204.

[574] State of the Poor, pp. i, xviii.

[575] Lecky, England in the Eighteenth Century, vi. 191.

[576] Slater, op. cit. p. 191.

[577] Report, p. 27.

[578] See above.  Another estimate puts them at 180,000.

[579] Tour, i. (2), 37, 38.

[580] Toynbee, Industrial Revolution, p. 62.

[581] Hasbach, op. cit. p. 71.

[582] Marshall, Review of Agriculture, Reports Western Department, p. 18.

[583] Parliamentary Reports, Commissioners (1897), xv. 32.

[584] Parliamentary Accounts and Papers, lxxx. 21.  The number of those owning over 500 acres does not concern the small owner or the yeoman class, but they were:  from 500 acres to 1,000, 4,799; from 1,000 to 2,000, 2,719; from 2,000 to 5,000, 1,815; from 5,000 to 10,000, 581; from 10,000 to 20,000, 223; from 20,000 to 50,000, 66; from 50,000 to 100,000, 3; over 100,000, 1.  For the numbers of the ‘holdings’ of various sizes in 1875 and 1907 see below, p. 334.  The term ‘holdings’, however, includes freeholds and leaseholds.

CHAPTER XIX

1816-1837

DEPRESSION

The summer of 1816 was wretched; the distress, aggravated by the bad season, caused riots everywhere.  At Bideford the mob interfered to prevent the export of a cargo of potatoes; at Bridport they broke into the bakers’ shops.  Incendiary fires broke out night after night in the eastern counties.  At Swanage six people out of seven were paupers, and in one parish in Cambridgeshire every person but one was a pauper or a bankrupt.[585] Corn rose again:  by June, 1817, it was 117s., but fell to 77s. in September.

In 1818 occurred a drought of four months, lasting from May till September, and great preparations were made to ward off the expected famine; immense quantities of wheat came from the Baltic, of maize from America, and beans and maize from Italy and Egypt, with hay from New York, as it was selling at L10 a ton.  However, rain fell in September, brown fields suddenly became green, turnips sprang up where none had appeared, and even spring corn that had lain in the parched ground began to grow, so the fear of scarcity passed.