152 JETHRO TULL AND LORD TOWNSHEND 



any one can shew me where an Inclosure has been made, and 

 not at least half the inhabitants gone, I will throw up the 

 argument." 



In the passages quoted from these five books are outlined some 

 of the principal points in the dispute which was fought out in the 

 next eighty years. On the one side are pleaded the pernicious 

 effects of commons on the inhabitants of the neighbourhood and 

 their live-stock ; the absence of any legal title to many of the 

 rights claimed over pasture commons, and then 1 frequent abuse by 

 commoners ; the obstacles to fanning improvement which were pre- 

 sented by open arable fields ; the -unprofitable use of land occupied 

 hi common ; the commercial and productive advantages of enlarged, 

 separate holdings. On the other side is urged the injury which the 

 break-up of open-field farms and the partition of commons inflicted 

 on small owners and occupiers of land. Much was to be said from 

 both points of view. Many sweeping assertions were made, both 

 by advocates and opponents, which were true of one district but 

 untrue of another. Both socially and economically, the reclama- 

 tion of wastes, the extinction of open-field farms, the appropriation 

 of commons, might be justified by the urgent necessity of developing 

 the productiveness of the soil, and of increasing to the fullest extent 

 the food resources of the country. In favour of the first two 

 changes, most agricultural writers are agreed ; in dealing with the 

 commons, it is at least doubtful whether the best possible course 

 was always adopted. 



From the productive point of view, the amount of waste land 

 was a standing reproach to agriculture. The disappearance of the 

 wild boar and the wolf in the reign of Charles II. suggests some 

 diminution of the area in which those animals had harboured. But 

 in 1696 Gregory King had estimated the heaths, moors, mountains, 

 and barren lands of England and Wales at ten million acres, or 

 more than a quarter of the total area. In all probability, the 

 estimate is wholly inadequate. But, assuming the calculation to 

 be approximately correct, it affords some measure of comparison 

 with conditions at the close of the eighteenth century. In 1795 

 the Board of Agriculture l stated that over 22 million acres in Great 

 Britain were uncultivated, of which 7,888,977 acres were in England 

 and Wales. Here too there is probably a gross under-estimate. 



1 Report of the Committee of the Board of Agriculture (1796). The total 

 acreages are over-estimated. 



