76 ENCLOSURES, 1770-1820 



were regulated not by services, but by wants. Such a 

 system promoted early marriages, encouraged a super- 

 abundant population, increased the number of illegitimate 

 births, annihilated distinctions between good and bad 

 workmen. It was now that the south fell hopelessly 

 behind the north. As population centred round the coal- 

 fields, the manufacturing industries of the south dwindled, 

 and its cloth and iron workers swelled the number of the 

 indigent poor. After the peace of 1 8 1 5, disbanded soldiers, 

 sailors, and militia-men added to the number of the discon- 

 tented and unemployed. Thousands of artisans were 

 discharged as machinery was introduced into manufactures. 

 Thus the balance between the demand and supply of 

 labour was completely overthrown, and the distress of the 

 wage-earning populations from 1810 to 1820 was only 

 paralleled by the miseries of the sixteenth century. 



