44 THE LAND AND ITS PROBLEMS 



for the real good of the industry itself. " Low rents, 

 low farming " is almost a proverb, and a great Scotch 

 farmer once said that high rental was the best of all 

 artificial manures. So much for the idea that the land- 

 owners are battening on the life blood of the agricultural 

 industry. 



I am not defending landowners because I am myself 

 a large landowner — but because, as such, I am in 

 possession of facts which those who attack agricultural 

 owners obviously do not know, or that in a blindly 

 partial spirit they deliberately choose to ignore. Land- 

 owners have ever proved themselves patriotic and have 

 done the best according to their lights ; and I have 

 no hesitation in affirming that there is no ground for 

 accusation against the agricultural owner on the score 

 of rack-renting. But I wish I could say as much in regard 

 to their past attitude and action in regard to the enclosure 

 of common fields.^ 



ENCLOSURE OF COMMON LANDS 



There can be no doubt that this policy, which was 

 adopted and rigorously pursued for several centuries, 

 led to the extinction of much that was valuable in our 



1 The Clarendon Press, Oxford. Lord Ernie on the Story of 

 Enclosure says, in the Times Literary Supplement, February 17th, 

 192 1, reviewing Mr. W. H. R. Curtler's The Enclosure and Re- 

 distribution of our Land : — 



"The return of the Enclosure Commissioners, 1876, shows 

 that the land enclosed between 1845 and 1875 amounted to 590,000 

 acres, which was divided among no less than 25,930 people, in the 

 following manner : 620 Lords of the Manor received on an average 

 44 1 acres each; 21,810 common right owners received on an 

 average 24 acres each ; 3500 purchasers (of land sold to pay expenses 

 of enclosure) received on an average 10 acres each. It is not 

 disputed that claims were often incapable of legal proof, or that 

 the value of a common right may often have been underestimated 



