Agricultural Revolution 27 



was an actual persecution of small owners, whose land was often 

 practically stolen from them. The commissioners of enclosure well 

 understood how to manage matters in the interests of the great land- 

 lords, so for instance that the land allotted to the small proprietors 

 should lie as far as possible from their houses and farm buildings. 

 The consequent increased expenses of cultivation did away with their 

 small margin of profit 1 . The little yeomen knew very well what 

 enclosure meant to them. But all their efforts to oppose it were 

 frustrated by the power of the great landlord or the large farmers, 

 who only saw in the abolition of the small proprietors an opportunity 

 for increasing the land in their own hands 2 . 



But while these numerous individuals were being ruined by the 

 division of the commons and consolidation of the open-field holdings, 

 extraordinary progress resulted on the economic side. From that 

 point of view, enclosures and engrossing were only a means by which 

 corn-growing was brought to yield the highest possible profits, and 

 by improved methods of cultivation increasing quantities were pro- 

 duced to meet the increasing prices. Whereas Anderson regarded 

 commons and " wastes " as one and the same thing 3 , the old village 

 pastures were now broken up by the large farmers, and in many cases 

 turned into excellent wheat-fields. Thus Arthur Young speaks of 

 the sandy tracts of Norfolk, Suffolk and Nottinghamshire, "which 

 yield corn and mutton and beef from the force of enclosure alone"; 

 and of the Lincolnshire wolds, "which from barren heaths at \s. per 

 acre are by enclosure alone rendered profitable farms 4 ." It is true 

 that some writers, opponents of the enclosures and the large farm 

 system, attempted to show that the enclosures had led to an exten- 

 sion of pasture-farming 6 , and so to condemn the movement from a 



passing through a village near Swaffham, in the county of Norfolk, a few years ago, to 

 my great mortification I beheld the houses tumbling into ruins, and the common fields all 

 enclosed ; upon enquiring into the cause of this melancholy alteration, I was informed that a 

 gentleman of Lynn had bought that township and the next adjoining to it ; that he had 

 thrown the one into three, and the other into four farms ; which before the enclosure were in 

 about twenty farms : and upon my further enquiring what was become of the farmers who 

 were turned out, the answer was, that some of them were dead, and the rest were become 

 labourers." 



1 Girdler, op. cit. p. 40. 



2 Addington, op. cit. p. 35 ; and Girdler, op. cit. p. 40. 



3 Anderson, Essays, Vol. Ill, p. 30. 



4 Young, Political Arithmetic, pp. 148 ff. 



5 The view that enclosures decreased arable land was mentioned and controverted as a 

 popular argument in an Essay on the Nature and Methods of ascertaining the specific Shares 

 of Proprietors upon the Enclosure of Common Fields, 1766, p. 13. It is to be found in 



