RURAL DEPOPULATION 299 



land, whose tenure depended on the will of the owner from whom 

 their rights were derived, had no independent or permanent title 

 to the strips which they cultivated, or to the common of pasture 

 which they had enjoyed in virtue of their arable holdings. Many 

 of them were offered no chance of renting land under the new system. 

 If the holdings were thrown together, and let to a farmer with 

 sufficient capital, the previous occupiers were at once reduced to 

 landless labourers. If the open-field farmer was allowed to remain 

 in the separate occupation of a compact holding, formed out of his 

 arable strips and commuted common rights, he was often ham- 

 pered by insufficient grass, by scanty capital, by the novelty of 

 his new position, by ignorance of any but the traditional practices 

 of farming. He went from bad to worse, and was in the end com- 

 pelled to surrender his land and compete for employment for 

 wages. Cottagers, who occupied at a yearly rent the ancient 

 cottages to which common rights were attached, received no 

 compensation for the loss of rights which they only exercised as 

 tenants. Squatters, who had encroached on the wastes and com- 

 mons, and had not made good their titles by prescriptive occupa- 

 tion, were evicted. Whether the village was depopulated by the 

 change or not, mainly depended on the use to which the enclosed 

 land was put. 1 If, as in the Warwickshire case, the tillage was 

 converted into pasture, employment was reduced, and the rural 

 population decreased. When, on the other hand, the breadth of 

 tillage was either maintained or extended, and when the modern 

 improvements in farming were introduced, there was an increase 

 in employment and also in numbers. 



It would be a mistake to suppose that village farms created a 

 demand for agricultural labour, or offered facilities for acquiring 

 land to increasing numbers. The contrary was the case. The 

 open-field system was inelastic, adapted for a stationary popula- 

 tion, dependent for the employment of surplus numbers on the 

 large enclosed farms of the neighbourhood, or on the practice of 

 domestic handicrafts, eked out by common-rights exercised under 

 legal titles or by successful encroachments. The smaller occupiers, 

 their wives and families, tilled their holdings for themselves ; the 

 common herdsman, shepherd, and swineherd tended their live-stock. 



1 The question of depopulation is discussed in William Wales' Inquiry into 

 the Present State of Population in England and Wale* (1781), and in the Rev. 

 John Hewlett's Enquiry into the Influence which Enclosure* have had upon the 

 Population of England (1786). 



