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   Effect of enclosures on the rural population; no necessary reduction in the number of small owners, but rather an increase; consolidation of farms, either by purchase from small owners, or by throwing tenancies together; the strict letter of the law; small occupiers become landless labourers; depopulation of villages when tillage was abandoned for pasture; scarcity of employment in open-field villages; the literary controversy; the material injury inflicted upon the rural poor by the loss of the commons; no possible equivalent in cash-value: the moral injury; the simultaneous decay of domestic industries; the rapid rise after 1790 in the price of provisions; a substantial advance in agricultural wages.

DURING the thirty-three years from 1780 to 1813, the industrial revolution, which in agriculture was expressed by the new methods and spirit of farming, influenced rural life in two opposite directions. Far-reaching changes were made which were justified, and even demanded, by national exigencies. As, in trade, the capitalist manufacturer displaced the small master-workman and domestic craftsman, so, in agriculture, land was thrown together in large holdings at the expense of small occupiers. Both manufacture and agriculture became businesses which required the possession of capital. Without money, workers, whether in trade or on land, lost the prospect of themselves becoming masters or employers. But the same changes which brought unexampled prosperity to landowners and large tenant-farmers, combined with other causes to plunge the rest of the rural population into almost unparalleled misery. The rapid growth of manufacturing towns created a new demand for bread and meat; it raised the rents of landowners; it swelled the profits of farmers. For a long series of years the war, by practically excluding foreign corn, maintained a high level of agricultural prices in spite of increased production. But to labourers who neither owned nor occupied land, the rise of prices brought no compensating advantages. On the contrary, they paid more dearly for all necessaries of subsistence, and the increased cost of living was not adequately met by a corresponding rise in wages. At the same time, the steps which were required for the adoption of those agricultural improvements, by which the manufacturing industries as well as large owners and occupiers of land were profiting, multiplied the numbers and increased the sufferings of landless labourers. The extinction of open-field farms reduced numbers of small occupiers to the rank of hired wage-earners; the appropriation of commons deprived many cottagers, not only of free fuel, but of the means of supplementing wages by the profits of their live-stock, their poultry, and their geese. In the eighteenth as in the sixteenth century it was still partially true that "enclosures make fat beasts and lean poor people."

   The structure of rural society was affected to its very foundations by the agrarian revolution which was in progress. A great population, standing on the verge of famine, and beginning to gather in industrial centres, cried aloud for food. Technical improvements in farming had been tested, which promised to supply the new demand for bread and meat, if only free play were allowed to the modern methods of production. It was from this point of view that agricultural experts, almost to a man, were unanimous in requiring the removal of mediaeval obstacles to progress, and the addition of every possible acre to the cultivated area. As open-field arable farms were broken up, as pasture-commons were divided, as wastes were brought into cultivation, the face of the country altered. The enclosing movement was attacked on various grounds. To its effects were attributed the disappearance of the yeomanry, using the words in the strict sense of farmer-owners; the monopoly of farms, or, in other words, the consolidation of a number of holdings into single occupations; the depopulation of rural villages; the material and moral loss which was alleged to be inflicted on the poor. Round these different points raged the contest of the latter half of the eighteenth century. Meanwhile the work of enclosure went on without interruption. At the present day the changes seem to have been surprisingly rapid; but to men who were living under the stress of war and scarcity, they appeared almost criminally slow. They so appeared to William Marshall, perhaps the most experienced and the least bigoted of the agricultural observers of the day. Writing in 1801, before the full pressure of famine prices had been felt, he says in The Appropriation and Inclosure of Commonable and Intermixed Lands: "Through the uncertainty and expense attending private acts, a great portion of the unstinted common lands remain nearly as nature left them; appearing in the present state of civilisation and science, as filthy blotches on the face of the country; especially when seen under the threatening clouds of famine which have now repeatedly overspread it."

   It does not appear that the necessary result of the enclosing movement was to diminish the number of occupying owners. On the contrary, the first effect of an enclosure was to increase the freeholders, since rights of open arable field occupation and of pasture common were often replaced by allotments of land in separate ownership. After 1689, the decline in the number of owners of small estates begins to be noted by contemporary writers. "At the Revolution," says a "Suffolk Gentleman," "there existed a race of Men in the Country besides the Gentlemen and Husbandmen, called Yeomanry, Men who cultivated their own property, consisting chiefly of farms from forty to fourscore pounds a year . . . the Pride of the Nation in War and Peace . . . hardy, brave, and of good morals." Their alleged disappearance can only have been remotely due to enclosure, if, as the "Suffolk Gentleman" says, "by the influx of riches and a change of manners, they were nearly annihilated in the year 1750." On the other hand, a considerable body of evidence exists to show that, after the accession of George III., a reaction had set in, and that small owners were not only numerous, but actually increasing in numbers. Thus Marshall, writing in 1790 of small freeholders both in Yorkshire (Vale of Pickering) and in Leicestershire, says: "Some years back, the same species of frenzy,--Terramania--showed itself here, as it did in other districts. Forty years purchase was, then, not unfrequently given." The Reports to the Board of Agriculture (1793-1815) show that in many parts of the country small owners not only held their ground, but once more were buying land. Thus of the northeastern counties generally, Young states that "farmers have been very considerable purchasers of land." Norfolk (1804) is said to contain "estates of all sizes, from nearly the largest scale to the little freehold; one of £25,000 a year; one of £14,000 ; one of £13,000; two of £10,000; many of about £5,000; and an increasing number of all smaller proportions." In Suffolk (1797) "the rich yeomanry" are described as "very numerous . . . farmers occupying their own lands, of a value rising from £100 to £400 a year." In Essex (1807), "there never was a greater proportion of small and moderate-sized farms, the property of mere farmers, who retain them in their own immediate occupation, than at present. Such has been the flourishing state of agriculture for twenty or thirty years past, that scarcely an estate is sold, if divided into lots of forty or fifty to two or three hundred a, year, but is purchased by farmers. . . . Hence arises a fair prospect of landed property gradually returning to a situation of similar possession to what it was a hundred or a hundred and fifty years ago, when our inferior gentry resided upon their estates in the country."

   In the South-Eastern and East Midland counties, no marked decrease in the number of small estates is noticed. "One third" of Berkshire is said to have been occupied in 1813 by the proprietors of the soil. Owners of landed property from £200 to £600 a year were "very numerous." Oxfordshire (1794) contained "many proprietors of a middling size, and many small proprietors, particularly in the open fields." In Nottinghamshire (1798) "some considerable, as well as inferior yeomen occupy their own lands." Of late years in Hampshire (1813) "a considerable subdivision of property has taken place." Speaking of the farmers on the chalk hills of the county, the Reporter says that "many of them are the possessors of small estates which their thrifty management keeps upon the increase." In Kent, up to at least 1793, the number of owners of land seemed annually on the increase, "by the estates which are divided and sold to the occupiers. There is no description of persons who can afford to give so much money for the purchase of an estate as those who buy for their own occupation. Many in the eastern part of this county have been sold, within these few years, for forty, and some for fifty years purchase, and upwards."

   In the West Midland and South-Western district, small owners were at least holding their own. In North Wilts (1794), where a considerable number of enclosures had been made, "a great deal of the property has been divided and subdivided, and gone into the hands of the many." Brent Marsh in Somersetshire (1797) was a district of 20,000 acres which the stagnant waters rendered unwholesome to man and beast. Within the last twenty years much of this land had been enclosed and drained under a variety of Acts of Parliament. "Scarcely a farmer," says the Reporter, "can now be found who does not possess a considerable landed property; and many, whose fathers lived in idleness and sloth, on the precarious support of a few half-starved cows, or a few limping geese, are now in affluence, and blessed with every needful species of enjoyment."

   Devonshire (1794) continued to be a county of small properties. In Gloucestershire (1807), "the number of yeomen who possess freeholds, of various value, is great, as appears from the Sheriff's return of the poll at the election for a county member in 1776, when 5790 freeholders voted, and the number since that period is much increased." Landed property in Shropshire (1803) is "considerably divided. . . . The number of gentlemen of small fortune living on their estates, has decreased; their descendants have been clergymen or attornies, either in the country, or shopkeepers in the towns of their own county; or more probably in this county emigrated to Birmingham, Liverpool, to Manchester, or to London; but then the opulent farmer, who has purchased the farm he lives upon . . . is a character that has increased."

   The North and North-Western districts afford similar evidence, though in two counties a decrease is conspicuous. In Staffordshire (1813) the best and most improving farmers were "the proprietors of 200 or 300 acres of land, who farm it themselves." Derbyshire (1794) possessed numerous small occupiers, who eked out the profits of the land by mining, spinning, and weaving; but there were also occupiers of another description, "very properly styled yeomen; men cultivating their own estates with a sufficient capital." In Cheshire (1808) "the number of small land-owners is not apparently less than in other counties. The description of this latter class has, however, been very much altered of late years. From the advantages which have been derived from trade, and from the effects of the increase of taxes, which have prevented a man living with the same degree of comfort on the same portion of land he could formerly, many of the old owners have been induced to sell their estates; and new proprietors have spread themselves over the county, very different in their habits and prejudices." In Lancashire (1795) "the yeomanry, formerly numerous and respectable, have greatly diminished of late, but are not yet extinct; the great wealth, which has in many instances been so rapidly acquired by some of their neighbours, and probably heretofore dependants, has offered sufficient temptation to venture their property in trade, in order that they might keep pace with these fortunate adventurers. . . . Not only the yeomanry, but almost all the farmers, who have raised fortunes by agriculture, place their children in the manufacturing line." "A large proportion of the county of Westmoreland," says the Reporter, " is possessed by a yeomanry, who occupy small estates of their own, from £10 to £50 a year." These owners, as distinguished from tenant-farmers, were called "statesmen. They live poorly and labour hard; and some of them, particularly in the vicinity of Kendall, in the intervals of labour from agricultural avocations, busy themselves in weaving stuffs for the manufacturers of that town. . . . This class of men is daily decreasing. The turnpike roads have brought the manners of the capital to this extremity of the kingdom. The simplicity of ancient times is gone. Finer clothes, better dwellings, and more expensive viands, are now sought after by all. This change of manners, combined with other circumstances which have taken place within the last forty years, has compelled many a statesman to sell his property, and reduced him to the necessity of working as a labourer in those fields, which, perhaps, he and his ancestors had for many generations cultivated as their own." "A considerable part of the West Riding" (of Yorkshire), in 1799, "is possessed by small proprietors, and this respectable class of men, who generally farm their own lands, are as numerous in this district as in any other part of the Kingdom." In the North Riding (1800), "the size of estates is very variable; about one-third of it is possessed by yeomanry . . . much the largest proportion of the dales of the moorlands is in the possession of yeomanry, rarely amounting to £150 per annum." The Reporter asks "the common question, whether the number of the yeomanry increases or diminishes. . . . In a country like this, which is merely agricultural, I should suspect them to increase, in consequence of large properties having in late years been sold in parcels, and there being but few instances of gentlemen already possessed of considerable estates, making large purchases."

   The Reports to the Board of Agriculture show that small owners were still numerous in many counties, and were increasing in Norfolk, Essex, in Hampshire, and Kent, in North Wilts, Somerset, Gloucestershire, Shropshire, and the North Riding of Yorkshire. They were dwindling in Lancashire, which was rapidly developing as a manufacturing centre, and in Westmoreland, where the hard penurious lives of the older race of statesmen were not congenial to their descendants. In Hertfordshire farmers were not buying land, unlike their brethren in the eastern counties; a but possibly the competition of city merchants gave land in the neighbourhood of London a residential value. In Warwickshire (1794) it is definitely stated that consolidation of farms was driving occupiers off the land. The Reporter is speaking of open fields "in the southern and eastern parts of this county," which had been enclosed, and mostly converted into pasture. "These lands, being now grazed, want much fewer hands to manage them than they did in their former open state. Upon all enclosures of open-fields, the farms have generally been made much larger; from these causes, the hardy yeomanry of country villages have been driven for employment into Birmingham, Coventry, and other manufacturing towns, whose flourishing trade has sometimes found them profitable employment." a But though in this passage the word "yeomanry"* is used, it by no means follows that it is employed in the strict sense of occupiers who owned the land which they cultivated themselves. More probably it bears the looser meaning of "open-field farmers," with all their picturesque varieties of land tenure. Be this as it may, the evidence of the Reports is strong as to the general conditions of the country. In the period which they cover, and for a few years before, no great inroad had been made on the numbers of small owners. No necessary connection can, therefore, be established between the break-up of open-field farms and the alleged disappearance of farmer-owners.

* The word " yeoman," which certainly included leaseholders for lives, and copyholders, was not confined to owners of land which they cultivated with their own hands, without being entitled to a crest. Bacon (Works, vol. vi. p. 95) defines the English yeomanry as "the middle people between gentlemen and peasants," many of them living on "tenancies for years, lives and at will." Latimer's "father was a yeoman, but had no land of his own." He rented his occupation at £4 a year, and was a tenant-farmer. Blackstone uses the word as equivalent to qualified rural voters (Commentaries, bk. i. eh. 12). The definite restriction of the word to farmer-owners is a comparatively modern usage belonging to the nineteenth century. See Dictionary of Political Economy, s.v. Yeoman.

   The passage quoted from the Warwickshire Report indicates the lines on which the conflicting assertions of advocates and opponents of enclosures may be reconciled. The consequences, and often the objects, of the extinction of the system of intermixed arable strips on the open-fields, and of the partition of the pasture-commons were, generally speaking, the consolidation of larger holdings in the separate occupation of individuals. The village farm, as has been previously stated, consisted of two parts. There was the arable land, cultivated in intermixed strips; there were the grazing rights exercised over the pasture commons. Both in legal theory and as a historical fact, only the partners in the cultivation of the tillage land were entitled to the pasture rights, which were limited to each individual by the size of his arable holding. Outside this close corporation any persons who turned in stock were trespassers; they encroached, not only on the rights of the owner of the soil, but on the rights of those arable farmers to whom the herbage belonged. Strangers might be able to establish their rights; but the burden of proof lay upon them. Similarly, it was only by long usage that occupiers who rented ancient cottages could exercise pasture rights, unless they also occupied arable land with their houses. The statute of Elizabeth (31 Eliz. c. 7, 1589) which ordered that four acres of land should be attached to each cottage let to agricultural labourers, evidently refers to four acres of tillage. If no arable land was attached to the cottage, the occupier might enjoy the right of providing himself with fuel, but he could not turn out stock. It was on these strict lines that enclosure proceeded, and one of its promised advantages was the power of dealing with compact blocks of land. In pursuance of this policy, Edward Laurence, in 1727, instructs his steward to purchase "all the Freeholders out as soon as possibe"; to "convert copyholds for lives into leaseholds for lives"; to "get rid of Farms of £8 or £10 per annum, always supposing that some care be taken of the families"; to "lay all the small Farms, let to poor indigent People, to the great ones," not forgetting that "it is much more reasonable and popular to stay till such Farms fall into Hand by Death." This policy of substituting one large tenant for several small occupiers was generally pursued. Beyond possibility of dispute the Reports to the Board of Agriculture prove the tendency towards that "engrossment" of farms which Tudor writers denounced.

   The consolidation of holdings affected the old occupiers in very different ways. Where land was held by freeholders, copyholders of inheritance, or leaseholders for lives with outstanding terms, the process of collecting large areas in the hands of one owner could only be effected by purchase. On the enclosure of an open-field farm with a common attached, each proprietor had received a compact block, representing his intermixed arable strips, and an allotment corresponding in value to his pasture rights. Sometimes the area was so small as not to pay the cost of fencing; it was sold at once, often before the award was published. In some cases, the rising standard of living, the loss of their domestic industries, the attractions of the rapid fortunes realised in trade, the temptation of the high prices which land commanded during the war, induced small owners to sell their estates. Others who for a time clung to their property found themselves, at a later stage, compelled to part with it by the increase in taxation, by the enormous rise in the poor rates, by the pressure of mortgages contracted for additional purchases, jointures, and portions, or by the fluctuations of agricultural prices, or by the failure of banks. The period at which farmer-owners diminished most rapidly in numbers was between the years 1813 and 1835.

   Beyond the classes whose occupation of land or rights of common were of an independent or a permanent nature, no claim was, as a rule, recognised by enclosure commissioners. If any compensation was made, it was on voluntary and charitable lines. The strict letter of the law was generally followed. Occupiers of arable land, whose tenure depended on the will of the owner from whom their rights were derived, had no independent or permanent title to the strips which they cultivated, or to the common of pasture which they had enjoyed in virtue of their arable holdings. Many of them were offered no chance of renting land under the new system. If the holdings were thrown together, and let to a farmer with sufficient capital, the previous occupiers were at once reduced to landless labourers. If the open-field farmer was allowed to remain in the separate occupation of a compact holding, formed out of his arable strips and commuted common rights, he was often hampered by insufficient grass, by scanty capital, by the novelty of his new position, by ignorance of any but the traditional practices of farming. He went from bad to worse, and was in the end compelled to surrender his land and compete for employment for wages. Cottagers, who occupied at a yearly rent the ancient cottages to which common rights were attached, received no compensation for the loss of rights which they only exercised as tenants. Squatters, who had encroached on the wastes and commons, and had not made good their titles by prescriptive occupation, were evicted. Whether the village was depopulated by the change or not, mainly depended on the use to which the enclosed land was put. If, as in the Warwickshire case, the tillage was converted into pasture, employment was reduced, and the rural population decreased. When, on the other hand, the breadth of tillage was either maintained or extended, and when the modern improvements in farming were introduced, there was an increase in employment and also in numbers.

   It would be a mistake to suppose that village farms created a demand for agricultural labour, or offered facilities for acquiring land to increasing numbers. The contrary was the case. The open-field system was inelastic, adapted for a stationary population, dependent for the employment of surplus numbers on the large enclosed farms of the neighbourhood, or on the practice of domestic handicrafts, eked out by common-rights exercised under legal titles or by successful encroachments. The smaller occupiers, their wives and families, tilled their holdings for themselves; the common herdsman, shepherd, and swineherd tended their live-stock. On middle-sized occupations, servants in husbandry, annually hired at the fairs for fixed yearly wages, and boarded and lodged in the house, did the work of the farm. Except at harvest there was little demand for day-labour. Threshing, the most unwholesome of rural occupations, was practically the only winter employment. On the open-fields, there were no quickset hedges to plash, or trim, or weed; no ditches to scour; no drains to maintain. There were no drilled crops to keep clean; turnips were seldom grown, and beans rarely hoed. This scarcity of constant, and especially of winter, employment, which will probably be reproduced under the rule of small holdings, partly explains the slow growth of rural population. It also emphasises the value to day-labourers of commons and domestic handicrafts. Without them it is difficult to understand how agricultural labourers, who were not partners in village farms, even existed. "In hay and harvest time," writes Forster in Enquiry into the Present High Price of Provisions (1767), "it is inconceivable what numbers of tradesmen and handicraftsmen flock into the country." "If," says Stone, "the farmers in the most unenclosed counties . . . where there are no manufactories, could get no further assistance during their harvest than from their own inhabitants, their grain would frequently be spoiled." To the same effect wrote the Reporters to the Board of Agriculture. Open-field farmers were in harvest dependent on migratory labour. In unenclosed counties, says the Report to the Board for Huntingdonshire, very little employment of a constant kind was given to labourers, who stop with the farmers to help thresh out their grain in the winter, and "leave for more cultivated counties where labour is more required." The open-field farmer of the county depended for harvesting on "the wandering Irish, manufacturers from Leicestershire and other distant counties." The same was said to be true of Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire. In Wiltshire, the crops were harvested by taskers "from the more populous parts of the county or from Somersetshire, or other neighbouring counties." In the Isle of Wight, during the harvest of 1793, there were "from 600 to 700" labourers employed "from Dorsetshire and West Somerset." It illustrates the times to add that, as there was a hot press out for the Navy, they came and went with a pass from the Government. In Herefordshire the crops were harvested by Welshmen from Cardiganshire, men owning one horse between four or five, riding barebacked, turn and turn about, and "covering great distances with extraordinary speed."

   Enclosed counties where tillage was maintained, therefore, already afforded larger and more constant employment than unenclosed counties. Still greater was the demand for labour, where the improved practices had been adopted. If, however, the enclosed arable land was laid down to grass, the opposite effect was produced. Up to the last decade of the eighteenth century, it is probable that open arable farms, especially in the Midland counties, were mainly enclosed for conversion to pasture. In the later stages of the Napoleonic wars this tendency to grass-farming was not only checked, but violently reversed, and large tracts of pasture were ploughed for corn. Yet, during the first thirty years of the reign of George III., the occupiers of village farms had reason to fear, not only loss of their holdings, but scarcity of employment. Anonymous pamphlets are not the most reliable evidence; but the "Country Gentleman" (The Advantages and Disadvantages of enclosing Waste Lands and Common Fields, 1772, pp. 8, 32) is quoted by the Board of Agriculture with approval. His description of the dislike and alarm with which schemes of enclosure were regarded by the rural population may therefore be accepted as true :--"the great farmer dreads an increase of rent, and being constrained to a system of agriculture which neither his inclination or experience would tempt him to; the small farmer, that his farm will be taken from him and consolidated with the larger; the cottager not only expects to lose his commons, but the inheritable consequences of the diminution of labour, the being obliged to quit his native place in search of work." Their fears were often justified. Many an open-field farmer verified the truth of the "Country Gentleman's" conclusion that, after enclosure, "he must of necessity give over farming, and betake himself to labour for the support of his family." Hundreds of cottagers, deprived of the commons, experienced that lack of rural employment which drove them into the towns in search of work. To make the lot of these "reduced farmers" as easy as possible, he recommended that a "sufficient portion of land" should be attached to their cottages to enable them to keep a cow or two. With the gloomy forebodings of the "Country Gentleman" may be contrasted the triumphant hopefulness of Arthur Young. Both wrote at the same date; yet the gloom of the one and the hopes of the other were equally well founded in the districts to which they respectively refer. What, asks Young (Political Arithmetic, 1774, p. 150) will opponents "say to the inclosures in Norfolk, Suffolk, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, and all the northern counties? What say they to the sands of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Nottinghamshire, which yield corn and mutton and beef from the force of INCLOSURE alone? What say they to the Wolds of York and Lincoln, which from barren heaths at 1s. per acre are by INCLOSURE alone rendered profitable farms? . . . What say they to the vast tracts in the peak of Derby which by INCLOSURE alone are changed from black regions of ling to fertile fields covered with cattle? What say they to the improvements of moors in the northern counties, where INCLOSURES alone have made those countries smile with culture which before were dreary as night?"

   In 1774, when both Arthur Young and the "Country Gentleman" were writing, improved methods of arable farming and the use of roots, clover, and artificial grasses had not extended beyond a few favoured districts; corn and cattle were still treated as distinct departments of farming, impossible on the same land; the tendency was still strong to convert arable land into pasture; the science of stock-breeding and stock-rearing was still in its infancy; improved means of communication had not relieved farmers in almost every district from the necessity of devoting the greater part of their holdings to corn-growing, or enabled them to put their land to the best use by facilitating the interchange of arable produce; above all, no urgent demand for meat and milk, as well as bread, was as yet made by a rapidly growing class of artisans. In another twenty years these conditions had been changed, or were altering fast. But it is to this early period, when arable land was being converted to pasture, and the superiority of the new agricultural methods was still disputed, that nearly all the writers belonged, who are most frequently quoted for or against enclosures. After 1790 no voice is raised against the movement on any other ground than the moral and social injury inflicted upon oven-field farmers and commoners. The economic gain is admitted. Individual occupation, as an instrument of scientific and practical farming and of increased production, had demonstrated its superiority over commonable fields. The supply of eggs and poultry may have dwindled; but it was more than compensated by the larger supply of bread and meat. The arguments of the deserted village and of scarcity of employment were losing their force, when, under the strong pressure of necessity, the reaction had set in from pasture to extended tillage. In these directions the defence of the enclosing movement was immensely strengthened. But, during the same period, the social results of the agrarian revolution were rapidly revealing themselves, and were attracting increased attention. Those results, aggravated in their evil effects by industrial changes and the operation of the Poor Law, were disastrous to a large number of open-field farmers, cottagers, and commoners who had lost their hold upon the land. The strongest argument against enclosures was the material and moral damage inflicted upon the poor.

   In comparatively rare instances commoners who exercised common-rights were not put to strict proof of their legal title. Even where this lenient policy was adopted, or where the right was established at law, the claim was often supposed to be satisfied by the gift of a sum of money, or by an allotment of land. Money, to a man who had no power of investment, was a precarious provision, which generally was soon spent. Land was a better substitute; but the allotment might be too small to repay the cost of fencing, or too distant to be of real benefit; it was seldom enough for the summer and winter keep of a cow. The land and the cow were often sold together, as soon as, or sometimes before, the award was made. Sometimes, again, legal principles were set aside, and allotments of land, more or less inadequate, were made for cottage building, or for the benefit of the poor of the parish to supply pasture or fuel. But probably less than 5 per cent. of the enclosure Acts made any provision of this kind.

   The injury inflicted on the poor by the loss of their common of pasture, whether legally exercised or not, was indisputably great. It was admitted by those who, on other grounds, were the strongest supporters of enclosures. Arthur Young himself, though he never swerved from his advocacy of large enclosed holdings, had been converted to the principle of an admixture of occupying ownerships for small farmers. His travels in France had shown him the "magic of property" at work. In England he had witnessed its effects in the Isle of Axholme. "In respect of property," he writes, "I know nothing more singular respecting it, than its great division in the isle of Axholm. In most of the towns there, for it is not quite general, there is much resemblance of some rich parts of France and Flanders. The inhabitants are collected in villages and hamlets; and almost every house you see, except very poor cottages on the borders of commons, is inhabited by a farmer, the proprietor of his farm, of from four or five, and even sewer, to twenty, forty, and more acres, scattered about the open-fields, and cultivated with all that minutiae of care and anxiety, by the hands of the family, which are found abroad, in the countries mentioned. They are very poor, respecting money, but very happy respecting their mode of existence. Contrivance, mutual assistance, by barter and hire, enable them to manage these little farms though they break all the rules of rural proportion."

   On these lines, he urged in A Question of Scarcity, plainly stated, 1800 that every scrap of waste and neglected land should be converted into possessions for the poor, and that all labourers should be assigned gardens and grass-land for the keep of a cow. In Inquiry into the Propriety of applying Wastes to the better Maintenance and Support of the Poor,1801, he proposed that labourers should be allowed to absorb for themselves the small commons which were situated in the centre of enclosed districts, and that all Acts of Parliament for the reclamation of wastes should attach enough land to every cottage to provide summer and winter keep for a cow, the land to be inalienable and vested in the parish. He based these recommendations on his own personal observations of the effect of the enclosure of commons. "Many kept cows that have not since" is his frequent summary of results. Out of 37 parishes, he found only 12 in which the poor had not suffered. "By nineteen Enclosure Acts out of twenty, the poor are injured, in some grossly injured . . . . The poor in these parishes may say, and with truth, Parliament may be tender of property; all I know is I had a cow, and an Act of Parliament has taken it from me." The Board of Agriculture printed evidence to the same effects in its General Report on Enclosures, 1808. Out of 68 Enclosure Acts, 53 had injured the poor, who had lost their cows, and could no longer buy milk for their families. The same point is frequently noticed by the Reporters. Nathaniel Kent, for example, dwells upon it in his Report on Norfolk, and urges "all great farmers . . . to provide comfortable cottages for two or three of their most industrious labourers, and to lay two or three acres of grass land to each to enable such labourer to keep a cow and a pig." a Yet even when the opportunity to keep a cow occurred, it was not invariably used. " Cottagers," says Kent, "who live at the sides of the common generally neglect the advantage they have before them. There is not, perhaps, one out of six, upon an average that keeps even a cow." Nor was the disappearance of the cow invariably due to the loss of commons. Sometimes commercial motives operated. At Baldon, in Oxfordshire, "many cottagers had two, three or four acres, and they kept cows; now, still having the land, they keep no cows; their rent from 30s. to 42s. per acre and all applied as arable." In this instance, at all events, the cheapness of butter and the high price of wheat had tempted these men to plough up their grass-land.

   Whatever exceptions there may have been, the loss of the cow generally followed the loss of the commons. Nor was this the only injury which the cottager suffered. He lost his free firing, and the run for his geese and poultry. It is, in fact, impossible to measure in terms of cash equivalents the benefits derived from the commons, or the loss inflicted by their withdrawal. The case is well summarised by Barnes, the Dorsetshire poet of rural life:

Thomas (loq.) :

Why, 'tis a handy thing
To have a bit o' common, I do know,
To put a little cow upon in spring,
The while woone's bit ov orchard grass do grow.

John:

Aye, that's the thing, you zee. Now I do mow
My bit o' grass, an mcake a little rick;
An' in the zummer, while do grow,
My cow do run in common vor to pick
A bleäde or two o' grass, if she can vind em,
Vor tother cattle don't leäve much behind em.
An' then, bezides the cow, why we do lot
Our geese run out among the emmet hills;
An' then, when we do pluck em, we do get
Vor zeäle zome veäthers an' zome quills;
An' in the winter we do fat em well,
An' car em to the market vor to zell
To gentle-volks.
An' then, when I ha' nothén else to do,
Why, I can teäke my hook an' gloves, an' goo
To cut a lot o' vuzz and briars
Vor hetèn ovens or vor lightèn viers;
An' when the childern be too young to eärn
A penny, they can g'out in zunny weather,
An' run about, an' get together
A bag o' cow-dung vor to burn.

   The material loss inflicted on the poor was great: still more serious was the moral damage. It is probably true that the commons had attracted to their borders numbers of the idle and dissolute. But it is equally certain that they also afforded to hard-working and thrifty peasants the means of supplementing their weekly wages. They gave the man who enjoyed rights of common, and lived near enough to use them, an interest in the land and the hope of acquiring a larger interest. They encouraged his thrift and fostered his independence. Men who had grazing rights hoarded their money to buy a cow. They enabled wage-earners to keep live-stock, which was something of their own. They gave them fuel, instead of driving them to the baker for every sort of cooking. They formed the lowest rung in the social ladder, by which the successful commoner might hope to climb to the occupation of a holding suited to his capital. Now the commons were gone, and the farms which replaced them were too large to be attainable. Contemporary writers who comment on the increasing degradation of the labouring classes too often treat as its causes changes which were really its consequences. They note the increase of drunkenness, but forget that the occupation of the labourer's idle moments was gone; they attack the mischievous practice of giving children tea, but forget that milk was no longer procurable; they condemn the rising generation as incapable for farm labour, but forget that the parents no longer occupied land on which their children could learn to work; they deplore the helplessness of the modern wives of cottagers who had become dependent on the village baker, but forget that they were now obliged to buy flour, and had lost their free fuel; they denounce their improvident marriages, but forget that the motive of thrift was removed. The results were the hopelessness, the indifference, and the moral deterioration of the landless labourer. "Go," says Arthur Young in Annals of Agriculture, (vol. xxxvi. p. 508) and On Wastes (1801, pp. 12, 13), "to an ale-house kitchen of an old enclosed country, and there you will see the origin of poverty and the poor-rates. For whom are they to be sober? For whom are they to save? (such are their questions). For the parish? If I am diligent, shall I have leave to build a cottage? If I am sober, shall I have land for a cow? If I am frugal, shall I have half an acre of potatoes? You offer no motives; you have nothing but a parish officer and a workhouse. Bring me another pot." The same point is urged, with less vivacity and picturesqueness of statement, by the best writers of the day, especially by Howlett and Davies,

   The displacement of numbers of cottagers, commoners, and open field farmers came at a difficult crisis. Hitherto rural labourers in many parts of the country had regarded day work for wages on the land of farmers as a by-employment, which eked out the profits of their other industries. Now the commons were gone, and at the same time their own domestic handicrafts were being superseded by manufactured goods. It was now that the industrial population was shifting from the South to the North; that spinning and weaving deserted the home for the factory; that old markets were exchanged for the new centres of trade which gathered round the water-power or the coal and iron fields of the North. In the closing years of the eighteenth century, widespread complaints are made of decaying industries, of the loss of employment in rural districts, of the mass of pauperism bequeathed to small towns and villages by the departure of trades.

   Industries, which in 1800 were concentrating in the large towns of the North, had been previously scattered over a wide extent of country districts. Even where the trade maintained its ground, the introduction of machinery reduced the amount of employment, and transferred it from the cottage to the factory. At the same time many local manufactories were brought to the verge of ruin by the war, which limited the export trade. As the result of these changes in the conditions of rural life, poor-rates rose to an enormous height. Marshall, in his Review of the Reports to the Board of Agriculture, mentions the instance of Coggeshall in Essex, once a flourishing village, where the poor-rates, owing to the ruin of the baize trade, had risen to 16s. in the pound. This burden, increased as it was by the provision for the maintenance of the wives and families of militiamen, enlisted soldiers and sailors, crushed out of existence many small freeholders, who, because they employed no labour, derived no advantage from the operation of the Poor Law, but were assessed on the rental value of their land. As the local industries declined, or were concentrated in towns, or substituted machinery for manual work, the demand for labour was reduced in rural villages. Fewer opportunities for supplementing weekly wages by other employments were afforded. It was now that the South and South Midlands fell hopelessly behind the North.

   It is difficult to give any adequate impression of the degree in which, under the dying system of self-contained communities, industrial employments other than those of agriculture had been distributed among rural villages. Counties which at first sight seem purely agricultural, possessed a number of local industries, which, in addition to dyeworks, malthouses, breweries, mills, and tanneries, gave considerable employment. Bedfordshire had its osier baskets, its reed matting, its straw plaiting; its spinning of hemp had died out in 1803, but men as well as women still made pillow lace. Straw-plaiting extended along the borders of Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, and Cambridgeshire. The best, that is, the weakest straw, commanded high prices, and sold for from 2d. to 4d. the pound. In Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire, woollen and worsted yarn was also spun for Norwich and the northern markets. Lincolnshire wove fabrics for women's dresses; Epworth made sack-cloth; coarse linen or hempen cloth was woven in many parts of the county. Suffolk had its spinning and combing of wool; and in the district round Beccles, where hemp was largely cultivated, quantities of hempen cloth were manufactured. Essex was famous for its baizes. But the trade was for the time ruined by the war. In the neighbourhood of Colchester, where during peace 20,000 persons had found employment, only 8,000 were now employed. At Halstead, Dedham, Bocking, and the surrounding villages, the industry had so decayed that numbers of hands were out of work, and the rates rose to over 20s. in the pound.

   Hampshire was not a manufacturing county. But it had a variety of industries ranging from manufactories of cloth, shalloons and coarse woollens, to bed-ticking and earthenware pottery. Kent was the county of hops; yet Canterbury and the villages round wove silk; Dover and Maidstone made paper; Crayford bleached linens and printed calicoes; Whitstable had its copperas works, Sandwich its salt-works, Faversham and Deptford their powder mills. Along the banks of the Wandle in Surrey were paper, oil, snuff and flour mills, mills for grinding logwood, as well as leather, parchment, calico, and printing works. The Mole turned iron mills at Cobham and flatting mills at Ember Court. The Wey collected on its banks many paper mills. In the Weald there still lingered iron-workers and charcoal burners. Godalming and the neighbourhood had its patent fleecy hosiery, its works for wool-combing, for blankets, tilts, and collar-cloths. Sussex formerly sent every year quantities of iron by land-carriage to London; but the trade was dying fast. It still remained one of the chief centres of the charcoal industry and of powder making. In Berkshire the woollen manufactures were dwindling. They were deserting Newbury, leaving behind a "numerous poor." But in the town and neighbourhood, kerseys, cottons, calicoes, linen and damask were still made, and the introduction of the manufacture of blankets was attempted. At Oakingham there were established silk-spinning and silk-weaving manufactories, and a considerable trade was carried on in hat-bands, ribbons, watch-strings, shoe-strings, sarcenets, and figured gauzes for women's dresses. In Oxfordshire the shag-weavers of Bloxham. and Banbury were out of employment and on the parish. The coarse velvet trade of Banbury was travelling north. The blankets of Witney still held their own; but the introduction of machinery had thrown two-thirds of the workmen out of employment, and the rates had risen tolls. in the pound. The glove trade of Woodstock flourished; but the polished steel trade had migrated to Birmingham and Sheffield, and leathern breeches, no longer worn, had ceased to be made.

   Northampton and the surrounding neighbourhood were already famous for boots ; Daventry manufactured whips and wove silk stockings; in Wellingborough and the surrounding villages lace-making employed from 9,000 to 10,000 persons, the thread being imported from Flanders and distributed to the workers in their houses. Since the war, the worsted manufactories of Kettering had decayed; instead of from 5,000 to 6,000 hands, only half were employed, and the remainder fell upon the rates. Warwickshire, Nottinghamshire, and Staffordshire were becoming manufacturing counties. Machinery was being introduced, and, as a consequence, their industries were being withdrawn from the villages and concentrated in towns. Outside Birmingham, there were the ribbon and tammy trades of Coventry, the horn combs of Kenilworth, the nails of Bromwich, the needles of Alcester, the worsted works of Warwick, the linen trade of Tamworth. For miles round Nottingham the villagers were stocking-makers; in different parts of the county were scattered mills for combing and spinning wool, or silk spinning and weaving, for polishing marble, as well as works for the manufacture of pottery, starch, and sail-cloth. Few cottagers were without a web of home-spun cloth. Shropshire had a great variety of local industries, such as garden pots at Broseley; fine china at Caughley; china, ropes, and chains at Coalport; glass works at Donnington; dye-works at Lebotwood; Shrewsbury and the neighbourhood maintained spinning and fulling mills, a trade in finishing Welsh flannels, manufactures of coarse linens and linen threads. In many cottages and farm-houses pieces of linen cloth were got up for sale. The glove trade of Worcester employed a large number of men and women in the city itself, and in the "county round to the extent of seven or eight miles." Kidderminster and the neighbourhood were carpet-makers. On the borders of Staffordshire and Warwickshire many were employed in making nails, needles, and fish-hooks.

   Over the greater part of Gloucestershire, and especially in the Cotswold Hills, there was much spinning of wool. The trade in the fine broad-cloths of Stroud and the surrounding parishes was in 1794 at a stand-still; but in the coarser quality required for army clothing it was brisk. Even here the introduction of machinery "has thrown many hands out of employment," and caused the poorrates to rise "to six shillings in the pound and upward." At Cirencester in 1807 many labouring people were still employed in sorting wool from the fleece; but the wool trade had much decreased in the last forty years, as also spinning woollen yarn and worsted since the introduction of machinery. Tewkesbury had its stocking-frame industry; Dursley and Wotton-under-Edge made wire cards for the use of clothiers; iron and brass wire, tin-plate, pins, rugs and blankets employed other districts of the county. But the decline of trade made itself felt in the great increase of rates. "In the clothing district," says Rudge, "the weight of parochial assessments falls uncommonly heavy on landed property. During the late scarcity, the average charge might be 4s. 6d. through the county; while at the same time it amounted to at least three times that proportion in some of the parishes where the clothing manufacture is carried on." In Somersetshire, the trade in woollen cloth and worsted stockings of Frome and Shepton Mallet had given employment, not only to the two towns, but to "a vast number of the lower order of people in the adjacent villages." But in 1797 the restriction of the export trade by the war, the introduction of machinery, and the competition of the North, had begun to injure the trade and lessen the demand for labour. Taunton had lost its woollen manufactures, though they still flourished at Wellington and Wiveliscombe.

   In Cornwall, carding and spinning were in 1811 dying out, and "to the total decline of this business must, in some measure, be attributed the progressive increase of the rates of the county." From Devonshire in 1808 came the same complaint of the failure of employment, though in the eastern part of the county lace-making still flourished. In Dorsetshire the principal manufactures were in the neighbourhood of Bridport and Beaminster, where in 1793, "all sorts of twine, string, packthread, netting, cordage, and ropes are made, from the finest thread used by saddlers, in lieu of silk, to the cable which holds the first-rate man of war." In this neighbourhood also were made the sails for shipping, sacking for hammocks, and all kinds of bags and tarpaulin. Here too were braided nets for the Newfoundland fishery and for home use. At Loders sail-cloth was woven. At Shaftesbury and Blandford, and in the surrounding villages on all sides, to seven or eight miles distance, was carried on the manufacture of shirt-buttons.

   Two other changes were in progress which in a minor degree added to the misfortunes of the labouring classes in country districts. In the first place, trade in agricultural produce was rapidly becoming wholesale instead of retail. Dairy-farms contracted for the supply of milk to towns, and milk was more easily obtained by the urban than the rural population. The produce of corn-farms was sold in bulk to corn-dealers or millers. Labourers could rarely purchase a bushel of wheat direct from the farmer. They could no longer carry their corn to the miller, pay for grinding, and take away the pure flour, and the offals for the pigs. Now they were obliged to buy from the miller or the baker, not only the flour, but the bran, with the profits of each trader added to the price of both. In the second place, a number of crops, some of which required much labour for their cultivation or special preparation, were dying out, because the industries which they served had migrated, or from some change of taste or fashion. As the linen trade became more concentrated in particular localities, flax was more rarely cultivated. The hempyards, which were once attached to many cottages and farm-houses, were similarly abandoned. The use of teasels by clothiers was displaced by machinery, and the crop was no longer cultivated. Woad, madder, and saffron found cheaper. substitutes. Liquorice disappeared from Nottinghamshire, camomile from Derbyshire, canary seed from Kent, carraway seed from Essex.

   The rapid increase in the price of provisions from 1793 onwards struck yet another, and a crushing, blow at the position of the landless labourer. The rise came with startling suddenness, and it found him defenceless. Without the commons he was entirely dependent on purchased food; without domestic industries he had less money to buy the means of existence. The greater the distance from London, the lower the wages and the higher the prices. This was certainly true of the West and South-West of England. Thus, the labourer had more to buy, less money to buy it with, and what money he had did not go so far as formerly. In yet another way, the great rise in prices affected the rural population for the worse. It no longer paid the farmer to board servants in husbandry. In the North, the system still survived, partly because of the high wages of day-labour, partly because the diet which custom accepted was more economical, and barley-broth and porridge were staple foods. Elsewhere the number of servants who were boarded and lodged in farm-houses dwindled; they became day-labourers, living how and where they could. Another opportunity for saving and another restraint on improvident marriage were thus removed.

   To a certain extent the rise in the prices was met by a substantial advance in wages. It is always easy to raise wages; it is extremely difficult to lower them. The reluctance of farmers to increase wages, when an advance in prices may be only temporary, is therefore intelligible. How far wages rose is a difficult field of enquiry. The remuneration of labour varies with the different seasons, with the different occupations of the men, with different contracts of service, with different districts of the same county. The one outstanding point is that the real earnings of agricultural labourers are not now, and, to a greater extent, were not then, represented only by the weekly sums which are paid in cash. To these weekly payments must be added earnings at piece-work, at hay and corn harvest, perquisites, allowances in kind, cottages and gardens, either rent free or rented below their economic value. On these points the Reports to the Board of Agriculture, 1793-1815, supply no reliable evidence. Most of them speak of a considerable rise in wages; they rarely mention the point from which the advance is measured. They register the averages of the daily or weekly payments ; they seldom give the method by which the rate is calculated.

   Failing the Reports to the Board of Agriculture, the enquirer is thrown back on Young's generalisations. As the result of his calculations in the Farmers' Tours of 1767-70, it may be estimated that the average rate of wages was 1s. 2d. a day--more in the neighbourhood of London, less in more distant counties, least in the West and South. From 1770 to 1790 there does not seem to have been any appreciable and general rise. In the neat twenty-five years a striking advance was made. Tooke' History of Prices states that agricultural wages were "doubled or nearly so." Young's Enquiry into the Rise of Prices in Europe during the last twenty-five years (1815) calculated that, taking the "mean rate" of wages in 1770 at 7s. 41d., the "price of labour had in forty years about doubled." Both he and Tooke state that the wages of agricultural labourers had reached the level of those of artisans. It is difficult to accept these estimates. Few of the Reports to the Board of Agriculture really belong to the later part of the period 1793-1815, and the only county in which the Reporters to the Board state that wages had doubled between 1794 and 1812 is Warwickshire. In Essex, however, there is some indication of wages having doubled, if the 1s. 2d. of 1770 is taken as the starting-point. In the Report for 1794, the average of summer and winter wages is given as 9s. l½ d. a week; in that for 1807, at 12s. 7d. The evidence of the subsequent rise comes from another source. On an Essex farm the rate of wages paid to an ordinary labourer, who had not the care of stock, rose from 10s. 6d. a week in 1800 to 12s. a week in 1802, and to 15s. a week in 1812. Whatever weight may be attached to the generalisations of Tooke and Young, it is certain that a very important advance in agricultural wages was made during the period of the Napoleonic wars. Unfortunately, it is equally certain that, even if wages had doubled, the price of provisions had trebled. In other words, effective earnings had diminished by a third. It is the suddenness of this advance in prices that explains, though it does not justify, the makeshift expedients for relief which were adopted by administrators of the Poor Law.