2 24 History of the English Landed Interest. 



prevented varying their mode of cropping, and the latter, by 

 the large provision of turnips, etc, required in winter and 

 spring in this country, much injuring themselves in their sub- 

 sequent crops of barley. The commons then affording little or 

 no sustenance ; the smallness, too, of the pieces, consisting fre- 

 quently of two, three, four, five roods, and so on, preventing 

 in many instances attempts at draining, and their awkward 

 distance and disposition considerably increasing the expense of 

 manure, attended with much loss of time, are very considerable 

 obstacles to improvements." 



Here we have a recapitulation in a succinct form of the old 

 grievances pointed out by Fitzherbert and Blith, as well as 

 by ourselves earlier in this chapter. Why then, it will be 

 asked, had not the enclosure system swept all this obsolete 

 old economy away ? Our answer is best given in the words 

 of the Cumberland Report already quoted. Its writer points 

 out that the great obstacle to the improvement of the system 

 arose from " a laudable anxiety in the customary tenants to 

 have their little patrimony descend to their children." These 

 " small properties, loaded with fines, heriots, and boon days, 

 joined to the necessary expense of bringing up and educating 

 a numerous family, can only be handed down, from father to 

 son, by the utmost thrift, hard labour, and penurious living ; 

 and every little saving being hoarded up for the payment of 

 the eventful fine, leaves nothing for the expenses of travelling 

 to see improved modes of culture, and to gain a knowledge of 

 the management and profits of different breeds of stock, and 

 be convinced by ocular proofs that their own situations are 

 capable of producing similar advantages." The writer of the 

 East Riding Report, speaking of the township of Humanby, 

 relates how the soil of the open fields was so exhausted by 

 crops injudiciously repeated that it returned little more corn 

 than was necessary for seed and the support of the numerous 

 families employed in cultivating it. Even the sheep, he 

 says,- suffered from such mismanagement, and " poverty was 

 the inmate of every dwelling." Determined, if he could, 

 to introduce a better system, so far as 13 Geo. III. c. 81 

 would allow, he convened numerous meetings, but found his 



