LAND AS AN INVESTMENT FOR MONEY 161 



indeed any one road that would alow it. . . . The whole land 

 raised and uneven, and full of stones, many of them very large, 

 of a hard iron quahty, and all the ridges crooked in shape of an S, 

 and very high and full of noxious weeds, and poor, being worn out 

 by culture, without proper manure or tillage. . . . The people 

 poor, ignorant, and slothfull, and ingrained enimies to planting, 

 enclosing, or any improvements or cleanness." 



Neither in Scotland nor in England were open-field farmers, or 

 tenants-at-will, or even leaseholders for hves, likely to initiate 

 changes in the cultivation of the soil. It was almost equally idle 

 to expect that small freeholders would attempt experiments on the 

 agricultural methods of their forefathers, which, in a single season, 

 might bring them to the verge of ruin. In both c ountries, it w as 

 t he large landlords who too k the lead in_ the_agricultural revolution 

 of the eighteenth century, and the l arger farmers who were the first 

 to a dopt improvem ents. Both classes found that_land was the 

 m ost profitable inves tment for their capital.^ Their p^sqnal 

 motives were probably, in the main, self-interested, and a risfi in 

 rental value or in the profits of their business was their xeward. 

 But though philanthropy and farming make a fractious mixture, 

 the move ment was of national value. When the sudden develop- 

 ment of manufacturing industries created new markets for food- 

 suppHes, necessity demanded the conversion of the primitive self- 

 sufficing village-farms into factories of bread and meat. For more 

 than half a century the natural conservatism or caution of agri- 

 culturists resisted any extensive change. Down to 1760 the pl-, 

 pressure of a growing population was scarcely felt. Nor were the 

 commercial advantages of scientific husbandry so clearly estabhshed, 

 even in 1790, as to convince the bulk of Enghsh landlords of the 

 wisdom of adopting improved methods. 



The comparatively slow progress of the movement is illustrated 

 by the variations in the number of Enclosure Acts passed before 

 and after 1760. But it must always be remembered that an Act of 

 Parhament was not the only method of enclosure, and that counties 

 had been enclosed, either entirely or mainly, without their inter- 

 vention. In Tudor times open-field arable lands and common 

 pastures had been sometimes enclosed not only by agreement or 

 purchase, but by force or fraud. Some timm| they had been 

 extinguished, in whole or in part, by one individual freeholder, 

 who had bought up the strips of his partners. Sometimes, where 



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