THE CASE FOR ENCLOSURES 127 



Commons." Taj^lor says that " people are nowhere-more penurious 

 than such as border on commons." " This poverty," he explains, 

 " is due to God's displeasure at the idleness of the Borderers," or 

 commoners. They have no settled industry. They look to the 

 profits of a horse or cow. if they can keep one ; if not, they can at 

 least " compass a goose or a sv\dne." If they have no Hve-stock at 

 all, thej' are '" sure of furze, fern, bushes, or cowdung, for fuel to 

 keep them warm in winter." They can beguile, writes Moore, the 

 " silly Woodcock and his feathered fellows by tricks and traps of 

 then" own painful framing," and so gain money enough to keep them 

 till they have to work again. Sometimes they earn a few shillings 

 by guarding the flocks and herds of others. But, if a sheep or a cow 

 is missing, the " chuck-fists " will not pay them their wage, but 

 suspect them of theft, and proceed against them by law. The 

 Commons are, in fact, " Nurseries of Thieves and Horse-stealers." 

 Lee is of the same opinion that commons fostered idleness. 

 Perhaps, he admits, "3 or 4 shepherd boj^es " by enclosures " will 

 be necessitated to lay aside that idle employment ; . . . destructive 

 to the soules of those Lads, in that, poor creatures, they are brought 

 up by this means without either civill or reHgious education." 

 When they should have been at school or at church, they were 

 '■ plajnng at nine-holes under a bush," while their cattle make a 

 prey on their neighbour's corn, and " they themselves are made a 

 prey to Satan." Other moral gains are alleged that by enclosure 

 an end is put to occasions for litigation and strife between 

 common-field farmers, or for quarrels between herdsmen, and that 

 there are fewer opportunities for pilferings of land and of corn, or 

 for the destruction of a neighbour's crops by turning m horses and 

 cattle under pretence that they have broken loose from their 

 tethers. 



It is not true, in the opinion of the three ^^Titers, that enclosures 

 necessarily destroy tfilage. On the contrary, the cheapness and 

 abundance of corn are due to the opportunities that enclosures 

 aft'ord for breaking up worn-out pastures which jdeld double the 

 quantities produced on common fields. Nor is it true that enclosers 

 are under a curse so that the land passes out of their famihes. 

 Instances to the contrary are adduced from Leicestershire, and that 

 cannot be a special curse on enclosures which is a fate common to 

 all other landholders. Enclosure may diminish the number of 

 horses ; but one horse well kept is worth three so " jaded and tjTed 



