68 LAND REFORM 



of inclosures. Among other proposals he puts forward 

 a scheme for inclosing' a square of land twenty-two 

 miles each way, and dividing the whole into farms of 

 one square mile each. 



Now, by this scheme 484 square miles of land — 

 equal to 309,760 acres — would be inclosed, and 484 

 tenant farmers would be placed on holdings of 640 

 acres each. Young goes into elaborate calculations 

 as to cost of inclosure and other details of an economic 

 kind, and concludes by saying : — 



" Such an improvement as this creates a clear 

 income to the landlords of more than eleven hundred 

 thousand pounds a year, and forms a new rental of 

 ninety thousand a year, and of course such an income 

 to the tenants, who in return support many other 

 classes, etc."^ 



* 



He makes no mention of the rights of the com- 

 moners, of the peasant proprietors and others, in 

 the commons to be inclosed. With regard to the 

 labourers, whose wages were then seven and eight 

 shillings per week, he guards himself by saying : 

 "Very far is it from my thoughts to assert or hint 

 that our poor are too well paid. I am sensible that 

 there is much wretchedness amonost some of them 

 which ought to be alleviated." But the labourers in 

 nearly all cases eked their miserable wages by certain 

 benefits they got from the commons — benefits of 

 which inclosures, as fast as they were m^ide, deprived 

 them. 



In many parish and other local records a profit and 

 loss account is preserved which shows the enormous 



' Arthur Young's "Tour Through the Southern Counties of England 



and Wales." Third edition, 1772, 



