Staffordshire and Warwickshire,with their potteries and hardware,had also largely grown.So had the two northern counties of Durham and Northumberland,with their coalfields.The West of England woollen districts of Somerset,and Wilts,on the other hand,though they had grown also,showed nothing like so great an increase.The population of the eastern counties Norfolk,Suffolk,and Essex,had increased very little;though Norwich was still a large manufacturing town,and there were many smaller towns engaged in the woollen trade scattered throughout Norfolk and Suffolk.Among the few agricultural counties which showed a decided increase during this period was Kent,the best farmed county in England at that time.
If we turn to the principal towns we shall find in many of them an extraordinary growth between the end of the seventeenth century and the time of Adam Smith.While the population of Norwich had only increased,according to the best authority,by about one-third,and that of Worcester by one-half,the population of Sheffield had increased seven-fold,that of Liverpool ten-fold,of Manchester five-fold,of Birmingham seven-fold,of Bristol more than three-fold.The latter was still the second city in the kingdom.Newcastle (including Gateshead and North and South Shields)numbered 40,000 people.
The Returns for 1881 are those of the parliamentary district.
Another point to be considered is the relation of rural to urban population.According to Gregory King,writing in 1696,London contained 530,000 inhabitants,other cities and market-towns,870,000,while villages and hamlets numbered 4,100,000.Arthur Young,seventy years later,calculated that London contained one-sixth of the whole population,and remarked that,'in flourishing countries,'as England,'the half of a nation is found in towns.'Both estimates are very unreliable,apart from the fact that both,and especially that of Arthur Young,overestimate the total number of the population,but the contrast between them justly indicates the tendency of towns even then to grow out of proportion to the rural districts.That disproportion has,of course,become even more marked since Arthur Young's day.In 1881 the total urban population was 17,285,026,or 66.6 per cent,while the rural was 8,683,026,or 33.3 per cent.
The only estimates of occupations with which I am acquainted are again those of Gregory King in 1696,and Arthur Young in 1769.They are too vague,and too inconsistent with one another,to be relied on,but I give them for what they are worth.
Agriculture In describing the agriculture of the time the first point of importance is the proportion of cultivated land to waste.Gregory King,who rather overestimated the total acreage of England and Wales,put the arable land at 11,000,000 acres,pasture and meadow at 10,000,000,houses,gardens,orchards,etc.,at 1,000,000,being a total of 22,000,000 acres of cultivated land,or nearly three-fifths of the whole country.A land-agent in 1727 believed one-half of the country to be waste.Arthur Young,writing fifty years later,puts the cultivated area at a much higher figure.Estimating the total acreage of England alone at 54,000,000 acres,he considered that 52,000,000 of these were in arable and pasture,in equal proportions.
One or other of the two first-mentioned estimates is certainly nearer the truth than the last.The exact proportion is,however,impossible to determine.
There is no respect in which the agricultural England of today differs more from that of the period which we are considering,than in the greatly reduced amount of common land,The enclosure of commons had been going on for centuries before 1760,but with nothing like the rapidity with which it has been going on since,it is known that 554,974 acres were enclosed between 1710 and 1760,while nearly 7,000,000 were enclosed between 1760 and 1845.4 At the beginning of the latter period a large proportion of this land,since enclosed,was under the primitive tillage of the common-fields.Throughout considerable districts the agrarian system of the middle ages still existed in full force.Some parishes had no common or waste lands belonging to them,but where common lands were cultivated,one and the same plan was generally pursued.The arable land of each village was divided into three great stripes subdivided by 'baulks'three yards wide.Every farmer would own at least one piece of land in each field,and all were bound to follow the customary tillage.
One strip was left fallow every year;on the other two were grown wheat and barley;sometimes oats,pease,or tares were substituted for the latter.The meadows were also held in common.
Up to hay harvest,indeed,every man had his own plot,but,while in the arable land the plots rarely changed hands,in the meadows the different shares were apportioned by lot every year,After hay-harvest the fences in the meadow land were thrown down,and all householders had common rights of grazing on it.Similarly the stubbles were grazed,but here the right was rarely open to all.Every farmer had the right of pasture on the waste.
Though these common fields contained the best soil in the kingdom,they exhibited the most wretched cultivation.'Never,' says Arthur Young,'were more miserable crops seen than all the spring ones in the common fields;absolutely beneath contempt.
