544 PARLIAMENTARY COLBERTISM : 
the large farmers were men who could start in life with 
fifteen hundred or two thousand pounds; and thus we find 
signs of a middle class in the country, who were capitalists 
substantial and employers of labour, but who did not themselves own 
ienants,  1,nq and did not engage in the actual work of the farm with 
their own hands. These men had an advantage over the 
small farmers, inasmuch as they were able to hold their stocks 
of corn for a longer period, and get the benefit of a rise of 
price, whereas the poorest of the small farmers were forced to 
realise at once, and were compelled to dispose of their whole 
wage harvest by Christmas at latest’. The substantial men were 
new system also able to afford better seed, better implements, and to 
profitable, ork the land on better principles, and hence they were able 
to pay a larger rent than the small farmers who stuck to 
the old-fashioned methods. The rise of an employing class 
occurred not only in manufacturing occupations, but in 
agriculture also, and the causes at work were precisely 
similar. The new facilities for commerce? brought about 
a development, and led to changes in the character of 
the system. There was scope in farming for the talents 
of men with business capacity, such as there had never been 
before. In the period before the Civil War, when the 
A.D. 1689 
—17176. 
1 Smith, Three Tracts, p. 12. 
} Defoe’s account of the changes at Chichester was published in 1724. * They 
are lately fallen into a very particular way of managing the Corn Trade here, 
which it is said turns very well to account; the country round it is very 
troitful and particularly in good Wheat, and the Farmers generally speaking 
carry’d all their Wheat to Farnham to market, which is very near Forty Miles, by 
Land Carriages, and from some Parts of the Country more than Forty Miles. 
But some Money’d Men of Chichester, Emsworth and other places adjacent, have 
join’d their Stocks together, built large Granaries near the Crook, where the 
Vessells come up, and here they buy and lay up all the Corn which the Country 
on that side can spare; and having good Mills in the Neighbourhood, they grind 
and dress the Corn and send it to London in the Meal about by Long Sea, as they 
call it: nor now the War is over do they make the Voyage so tedious as to do the 
Meal any hurt, as at first in the time of War was sometimes the Case for want of 
Convoys. It is true this is a great lessening to Farnham Market, but that is of 
no consideration in the Case; for if the Market at London is supply’d the coming 
by Sea from Chichester is every jot as much a publick good as the encouraging of 
Farnham Market, which is of itself the greatest Corn-Market in England, London 
excepted. Notwithstanding all the decrease from this side of the Country this 
carrying of Meal by Sea met with so just an Encouragement from hence, that 
it is now practised from several other Places on this Coast, even as far as 
Shampton.” Tour, I. Letter o. Pp. 70.