82 Freedom and Progress 



acute. First of all after the enclosures of the sixteenth century, 

 then during the Napoleonic wars, and again between 1853 

 and 1876. 



Each of these periods had been preceded by enclosure of land 

 and amalgamation of farms. Prices were high and farmers were 

 enterprising. Like Tennyson's Northern Farmer who stubbed 

 Thornaby waste, they reclaimed or broke in land not of the 

 best quality stiff clay that was difficult to work, land that ran 

 easily to gorse or scrub of some kind, light, sandy soil which had 

 to be made by marling, or high-lying land on which the crops 

 ripened late. Farmers pushed their improvements to the farthest 

 practical limit, and sometimes beyond it. 



The problem was clearly enough stated by Walter Blith in 

 1649. In his work The English Improver he mentioned ' eight 

 prejudices to improvements ', of which the following is the first : 

 * If a tenant be at never so great paines or cost for the Improve- 

 ment of his Land, he doth thereby but occasion a greater Rack 

 upon himself, or else invests his landlord into his cost and labour 

 gratis, or at best lies at his landlord's mercy for requitall, which 

 occasions a neglect of all good Husbandry, to his owne, the land, 

 the landlord, and the Commonwealth's suffering. Now this 

 I humbly conceive may be removed if there were a Law inacted 

 by which every landlord should be obliged either to give him 

 reasonable allowance for his cleare Improvement, or else suffer 

 him or his to enjoy it so much longer as till he hath a propor- 

 tionable requitall.' 



The evil described so clearly by Blith went on without any 

 remedy being attempted for more than two centuries. Leases 

 were advocated strongly by the men who reported on agriculture 

 in the counties between 1793 and 1815. They did little good. 

 When farmeis had their rents raised., or were turned out, at the 

 ends of their leases, they began ' farming to leave ' four or fiye 

 years before the end came. They laid out as little as p'bssible in 



