There seems to be no doubt that the absolute produce of the soil when culti vated in small allotments is greater than the same land would produce under the ordinary course of tillage by farmers. A much larger quantity of manure is used ; in some cases, four times as much as farmers are enabled to put upon their land, and a single rod is frequently made to produce vegetables sufficient for the con sumption of a labourer's family for six months ; but if every labourer had an allotment, the quantity of manure col lected could not be so great as it is at present. The disposable produce per acre of land in large farms is obviously much greater than when the same quan tity of land is divided into small holdings.
Captain Scobell estimates the average value of an allotment at 2s. per week, or about 51. per year, and that during the year twenty days' labour is required. The profit is equal to ten weeks' labour at wages of 10s. per week. According to another estimate, the gross profit of half an acre is calculated at 191. The pro duce consists of twelve bushels of wheat at 7s., and six hundredweight of bacon at 6d. per lb. ; and something is set down as the value of the straw. The rent, seed, and other expenses, it is said, will amount to 3/. 10s., leaving a profit (with out deducting the value of the labour) of 151.10s., which is equal to 68. a week for a whole year. Such an allotment as the one here alluded to will require about thirty days' labour in the course of a year; but it is necessary that the chief part of this labour should be given be tween Lady-day and Michaelmas. Sup posing that there are a million families in England and Wales who are in the same circumstances as the tenants of ex isting allotments, and that four families had an acre amongst them, the whole quantity of land in allotments would be acres, or nearly 400 square miles, which is one-third more than the area of Middlesex, and about the 128th part of the area of England. This would be about one forty-third of the arable land in England. At three guineas an acre the rent would amount to 787,500/., and the value of the produce, according to Captain Scobell, would be about 5,000,0001.
From the Anglo-Saxon period to the reign of henry VII., nearly the entire population of England derived their sub sistence immediately from the land. The great landowner consumed the produce of his demesne, which was cultivated partly by prieclial slaves and by the labour of the tenants and colliers attached to the manor. These tenants were the occupiers of small farms, and paid their rent in kind or in services, or in both. The cottagers had each a small croft or parcel of land attached to his dwelling, and the right of turning out a cow or pigs, or a few sheep, into the woods, com mons, and wastes of the manor. While working upon the lord's demesne, they generally received their food. [VILLEIN and VILLENAOE.] The occupation of the land on a farm of one hundred and sixty acres, called Holt, in the parish of Clapham, Sussex, has been traced at various dates between the years 1200 and 1400. During the thirteenth and four
teenth centuries, this farm, which is now occupied by one tenant, was a hamlet, and there is a document in existence which contains twenty-one distinct con veyances of land in fee, described to be parcels of this hamlet. In 1400 the number of proprietors began to decrease , by the year 1520 it had been reduced to six ; in the reign of James I. the six were reduced to two ; and soon after the re storation of Charles H., the whole be came the property of one owner, who let it as a farm to one occupier. (Quarterly Review, No. 81, p. 250.) The history of the parish of Hawsted in Suffolk, by Sir T. Cullum, shows a similar state of things with regard to the occupancy of land. In the reign of Edward I. (1272 1307) two-thirds of the land in the parish, which contains 1980 acres, were held by seven persons, and the remaining thirst or 660 acres, was held by twenty-six per sons, which would give rather more than twenty-five acres to each holder. The number of tenants who did suit and ser vice in the manorial court at a somewhat later period was thirty-two; and one tenant was an occupier of only three acres. In the reign of Edward I. there were fifty messuages in the parish; in 1784 there were fifty-two ; in 1831 there were 62, inhabited by eighty-eight fami lies ; and in 1841 there were one hun dred inhabited houses, the increase of population being from 414 in 1831 to 476 in 1841. In 1831 there were nine occupiers of land who employed labour ers, and two who did not hire labour.
The consolidation of small farms in the sixteenth century, and the altered social state of the country which took place at that period from a variety of causes, dis severed to a great extent the labouring classes from the soil which they culti vated. They now worked for money wages ; and in vain did the legislature attempt to preserve this class from de pendence on this source of subsistence, by enacting penalties against building any cottage "without laying four acres of land thereto." (31 Eliz. c. 7.) There were still, however, large tracts of waste and common lands on which the cottager could turn a cow, a pig, a few sheep, or geese, and this right still gave him a por tion of subsistence directly from the land. The division and inclosure of these commons and wastes completed the pro cess by which the labourer was thrown for his sole dependence on money wages. From the reign of George I. to the close of the reign of George III., about four thousand inclosure bills were passed. Under these allotments were made, not to the occupier, but the owner of a cot tage, and this compensation for the ex tinguished common right generally bene fited only the large landholder; and when this was not the case, the cottager was tempted by a high price offered by his richer neighbours, or driven by the abuses of the old poor-law, to part with his patch of land.