RURAL DEPOPULATION 301 



crops were harvested by Welshmen from Cardiganshire, men 

 owning one horse between four or five, riding bare-backed, turn 

 and turn about, and " covering great distances with extraordinary 

 speed." l 



Enclosed counties where tillage was maintained, therefore, 

 already afforded larger and more constant employment than unen- 

 closed counties. Still greater was the demand for labour, where 

 the improved practices had been adopted. If, however, the 

 enclosed arable land was laid down to grass, the opposite effect 

 was produced. Up to the last decade of the eighteenth century, 

 it is probable that open arable farms, especially in the Midland 

 counties, were mainly enclosed for conversion to pasture. In the 

 later stages of the Napoleonic wars this tendency to grass-farming 

 was not only checked, but violently reversed, and large tracts of 

 pasture were ploughed for corn. Yet, during the first thirty years 

 of the reign of George III., the occupiers of village farms had 

 reason to fear, not only loss of their holdings, but scarcity of employ- 

 ment. Anonymous pamphlets are not the most reliable evidence ; 

 but the " Country Gentleman" 2 is quoted by the Board of Agriculture 

 with approval. His description of the dislike and alarm with which 

 schemes of enclosure were regarded by the rural population may 

 therefore be accepted as true : " the great farmer dreads an 

 increase of rent, and being constrained to a system of agriculture 

 which neither his inclination or experience would tempt him to ; 

 the small farmer, that his farm will be taken from him and con- 

 solidated with the larger ; the cottager not only expects to lose 

 his commons, but the inheritable consequences of the diminution 

 of labour, the being obliged to quit his native place in search of 

 work." Their fears were often justified. Many an open-field 

 farmer verified the truth of the " Country Gentleman's " conclusion 

 that, after enclosure, " he must of necessity give over farming, and 

 betake himself to labour for the support of his family." Hundreds 

 of cottagers, deprived of the commons, experienced that lack of 

 rural employment which drove them into the towns in search of 

 work. To make the lot of these " reduced farmers " as easy as 

 possible, he recommended that a " sufficient portion of land " 

 should be attached to their cottages to enable them to keep a cow 



1 Clark's Herefordshire (1794), p. 29. 



* The Advantages and Disadvantages of enclosing Waste Lands and Common 

 Fields, by a Country Gentleman (1772), pp. 8, 32. 



