ABSTRACT
There was a shift of income in favour of persons other than farmers and also in favour of the poorer groups in society. Lower grain prices, it is argued, reduced the income of farmers and, through failure of many tenants to pay full rents, that of landowners. Given the technical and financial resources of early eighteenth-century England, increases in real income as a consequence of a rise in agricultural productivity, far from slowing down growth, had their own special contribution to make to it. The development of internal trade which followed from these changes inevitably affected distribution and transport. Developments in transport, distribution, and industry must have increased the demand for labour and so exercised some influence on the upward trend of wage rates which characterized areas of growth during these years. The fall in bread-grain prices was the result partly of long-runs of good weather, partly the impact of better methods of farming.
