CHAPTER XIII 



THE EVILS OF COMMON FIELDS. HOPS IMPLEMENTS.- 

 MANURES. GREGORY KING. CORN LAWS 



FROM what has been said in the preceding pages, it will be 

 gathered that a vast amount of compassion has been wasted 

 on the enclosure of commons, for it is abundantly evident 

 from contemporary writers that there were a large number 

 of people dragging out a miserable existence on them, by 

 living on the produce of a cow or two, or some sheep and 

 a few poultry, with what game they could sometimes catch, 

 and refusing regular work. Dymock, Hartlib's contemporary, 

 questions 'whether commons do not rather make poore by 

 causing idlenesse than maintaine them ; ' and he also asks 

 how it is that there are fewest poor where there are fewest 

 commons. 



In the common fields, too, there was continual strife and 

 contention caused by the infinite number of trespasses that 

 they were subject to. 1 The absence of hedges, too, in these 

 great open fields was bad for the crops, for there was nothing 

 to mitigate drying and scorching winds, while in the open 

 waste and meadows the live stock must have sadly needed 

 shelter and shade, ' losing more flesh in one hot day than 

 they gained in three cool days.' Worlidge, a Hampshire 

 man, joins in the chorus of praise of enclosures, for they 

 brought employment to the poor, and maintained treble ' the 

 number of inhabitants ' that the open fields did ; and he gives 

 further proof of the enclosure of land in the seventeenth 

 century, when he mentions ' the great quantities of land that 

 have within our memories lain open, and in common of little 

 value, yet when enclosed have proved excellent good land.' 



1 Worlidge, Systema Agriculturae (ed. 1669), p. 10. 



