AGRICULTURAL RENT IN THE EARLY VICTORIAN ERA by Stephen Peplow A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in The Faculty of Graduate Studies (Integrated Studies in Land and Food Systems) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) October 2012 © Stephen Peplow, 2012 Abstract This thesis concerns the economic and political relationship between the English tenant farmer, his landowner, and his Member of Parliament during the period between 1830 and 1865. Profound social and economic changes took place in agriculture during this time, notably the enfranchisement of the tenant farmer (1832), the Repeal of the Corn Laws (1846), and the development of the railways from 1832 onwards. The tenant farmer was an important actor in all three changes, but his role has been overlooked. This thesis brings him into focus in three chapters, each dealing with the tenant-farmer within the rural economy. Chapter 1 introduces the research project, makes a clear statement of the goals of the research, and reviews some of the recent literature. Chapter 2 deals with the ways in which agricultural rents were set in the 1830s and estimates agricultural rents from two centuries ago, using observations for nearly six hundred parishes in the southwest of England. The finding is that rents were set closely with Ricardian Rent Theory. Chapter 3 measures the impact on agricultural rents of railway development. The railways were laid from 1832 onwards, and farmers used the railways to take their stock to market. This saved large amounts of money, primarily from reduced loss of condition compared to droving to market. The social savings were approximately 1.1 per cent of GDP, a considerable sum. The chapter ii shows that about one fifth of the wealth transfer resulted from cheaper transportation, while the other four-fifths resulted from productivity gains as farmers rearranged their output to take advantage of the railways. Chapter 4 measures the impact of the agricultural interest on the voting decisions of Member of Parliament during the Corn Laws crisis in 1846. This chapter shows that tenant farmers had a small but measureable influence on voting decisions. iii Table of contents Abstract ....................................................................................................... ii Table of contents ......................................................................................... iv List of tables ...............................................................................................vii List of figures .............................................................................................. ix Acknowledgements ....................................................................................... x Dedication................................................................................................... xi Chapter 1. Introduction ................................................................................. 1 Research goals .......................................................................................... 3 Outline of the chapters .............................................................................. 4 Chapter 2. Rent-setting in early Victorian Britain .......................................... 15 Agricultural production in the 1830s ....................................................... 20 Landowners and their tenants ................................................................. 28 The tithe system ...................................................................................... 33 Theory of rent setting .............................................................................. 35 Data and methods ................................................................................... 42 Empirical tests ........................................................................................ 52 Discussion .............................................................................................. 65 iv Conclusion .............................................................................................. 66 Chapter 3. The advent of rail and British agriculture ..................................... 68 The development of the railways .............................................................. 76 Railways and Ricardian Rent Theory ....................................................... 80 Methods and data ................................................................................... 84 Results: estimation for 1832-1865 ........................................................... 96 Valuation of the savings at the national level ......................................... 101 Discussion ............................................................................................ 109 Conclusion ............................................................................................ 114 Chapter 4. Constituency interests and the Corn Laws Crisis of 1846 ........... 117 Electoral competition ............................................................................. 121 Politics in the 1840s .............................................................................. 123 The politics of agricultural protection .................................................... 136 The farmer as political activist ............................................................... 138 The structure of agricultural production ................................................ 140 Political pressure and the MP ................................................................ 143 Statistical methodology ......................................................................... 146 Analysis ................................................................................................ 149 Discussion and conclusion .................................................................... 162 v Chapter 5. Conclusion ............................................................................... 163 Bibliography ............................................................................................... 167 Appendix: Data Sources .............................................................................. 191 vi List of tables Table 1. Tabulation by county of the parishes. .............................................. 44 Table 2. Comparison of parish data. .............................................................. 53 Table 3. Results for pastoral test. .................................................................. 55 Table 4. Reported grain yields regression. ...................................................... 57 Table 5. Arable rent regression. ..................................................................... 59 Table 6. Local R2 values by county. ............................................................... 62 Table 7. Estates and their lands. ................................................................... 89 Table 8. Rents of large estates and parishes 1836. ........................................ 92 Table 9. Rents and access to track. ............................................................... 98 Table 10. Comparing the 31 and 21 estates. ................................................ 101 Table 11. Social Savings 1865. .................................................................... 102 Table 12. Regional contributions. ................................................................ 107 Table 13. Contested elections by type. ......................................................... 122 Table 14. 1841 General Election Results. .................................................... 125 Table 15. Church attendances..................................................................... 128 Table 16. Repeal voting in 1846. ................................................................. 135 Table 17. Voting for Repeal.......................................................................... 153 Table 19. Summary statistics from by-elections. .......................................... 157 Table 20. Conservative voting on Repeal and re-election. ............................. 159 vii Table 21. Re-election in large boroughs ....................................................... 160 Table 22. 1847 results and incumbency. ..................................................... 161 viii List of figures Figure 1. Localized wheat volumes and the region of interest. ........................ 21 Figure 2. The parishes within the region of interest. ...................................... 24 Figure 3. Bid-rent curve for two crops ..................................................... 37 Figure 4. Coefficient of determination by parish. ........................................... 61 Figure 5. Holkham Hall's land and railway, 1865. ......................................... 87 Figure 6. The 31 estates with railways in 1840 and 1865. ............................. 91 Figure 7. Annual rent and distance to station 1832-1870. ............................. 93 Figure 8. Social savings as a share of GDP. ................................................. 106 Figure 9. Anglican attendances. .................................................................. 130 Figure 10. Inter-county wheatflows. ............................................................ 142 Figure 11. Opposition predicted probabilities. ............................................. 155 ix Acknowledgements I wish to especially acknowledge the support of my wife Mary and