THE ENGLISH LAND SYSTEM 6i 



its present scale is mainly due to the same cause. It 

 is probable that the strong measures referred to had 

 some effect in checking- for a time the practice of 

 inclosures. No doubt, the ever-increasing amount 

 of relief given under the new Poor Law contributed 

 to restrain the rural population from those acts of 

 disorder, beggary, and crime to which they had been 

 driven by want and despair. 



Up to the end of the seventeenth century inclosures 

 had been made by private action. There are no 

 records to show what proportion the area which had 

 been inclosed up to that time bore to the whole of the 

 land of England. Later statistics, however, make it 

 clear that there were many millions of acres of land 

 still uninclosed.^ It seems certain that during the 

 seventeenth century and the first part of the eight- 

 eenth there still remained a multitude of cultivatinof 

 owners, composed of yeoman farmers, peasant pro- 

 prietors, and labourers with rights in the land. The 

 wage-receiving labourers were, however, increasing in 

 number, and were very badly off, being largely depen- 

 dent on the poor-rates for existence. 



Lord Macaulay, writing on the state of England in 

 1685, dwells on the power of the yeomanry, whom he 

 describes as "an eminently manly and true-hearted 

 race." He goes on to say : — 



" The petty proprietors, who cultivated their own 

 fields with their own hands and enjoyed a modest 

 competence, then formed a much more important part 

 of the nation than at present. . . Not less than one 



* Lord Macaulay quotes an authority showing this to be the case. 

 From " Abingdon to Gloucester, for example, a distance of forty or fifty 

 miles, there was not a single inclosure, and scarcely one between Biggles- 

 wade and Lincoln." The population at that time was estimated at 

 ji millions (Vol. I, chap, iii.), 



