Book II. APPROPRIATING LANDS. 561 



rotation, the triennial succession of fallow, wheat (or rye), and spring crops (as barlev, 

 oats, beans, and peas : thus adopting and promoting a system of husbandry, which, 

 howsoever improper it has become in these more enlightened days, was well adapted to the 

 state of ignorance and vassalage of feudal times. When each parish or township had its 

 sole proprietor, the occupiers being at once his tenants and his soldiers, or meaner vassals, 

 the lands were, of course, liable to be more or less deserted by their occupiers, and left to 

 the feebleness of the young, the aged, and the weaker sex : but the whole township 

 being, in this manner, thrown into one system, the care and management of the live stock, 

 at least, would be easier and better than they would have been under any other arrange- 

 ment ; and, at all times, the manager of the estate was better enabled to detect bad hus- 

 bandry, and enforce that which was more profitable to the tenants and the estate, by hav- 

 ing the whole spread under the eye at once, than he would have been had the lands been 

 distributed in detached unenclosed farmlets, besides avoiding the expense of enclosure. 

 Another advantage arose from this more social arrangement, in barbarous times ; — the 

 tenants, by being concentrated in villages, were not only best situated to defend each 

 other from predatory attacks, but were called out by their lord, with greater readiness, 

 in cases of emergency. Therefore, absurd as the common-field system is, in almost 

 every particular, at this day, it was admirably suited to the circumstances of the times 

 in which it originated ; the plan having been conceived in wisdom, and executed with 

 extraordinary accuracy, as appears in numberless instances, even at this distance of time. 



3484. Uninhabited tracts or forests. In different parts of Britain there were, and still 

 are, extensive tracts of land, some of them of a valuable quality, lying nearly in a state 

 of wild nature, which were never inhabited unless by freebooters and homebred savages. 

 These uninhabited tracts are styled forests ; and, heretofore, many or most of them have 

 been attached to the crown ; and some of them are still under royal patronage. 

 Whether they were originally set out for royal pastime merely ; or whether the timber 

 which stood on them was of peculiar value ; or whether, at the time of laying out town- 

 ships, those tracts were impenetrable woods inhabited by wild beasts, and, when these 

 had been destroyed, or sufficiently overcome to render them objects of diversion, were 

 taken under the protection of the crown; is not, perhaps, well iscertained. There were 

 also tracts of that description in different parts of England, but which appear, evidently, 

 to have been enclosed from a state of woodland or common pasture ; though it is pos- 

 sible they may have been nominally attached to neighbouring parishes. Of this descrip- 

 tion, principally, are the Wealds of Kent and Sussex, and many other old enclosed lands, 

 in different parts of the kingdom, whose fields or enclosures 3re of irregular shapes, and 

 their fences crooked. These woodland districts are, like the forest lands, divided into 

 manors, which have not an intimate connection or correspondence with parishes or town- 

 ships ; — a further evidence that they were in a wild state when the feudal organisation 

 took place. 



3485. In the western extreme of the island, the common-jield system has never, per- 

 haps, be r n adopted; it has certainly never been prevalent, as in the more central parts of 

 England. There, a very different usage would seem to have been early established, and 

 to have continued to the present time, when lords of manors have the privilege of letting 

 off the lands of common pastures to be broken up for corn, the tenant being restricted 

 to two crops, after which the land is thrown open again to pasturage ; and it is at least 

 probable, that the lands of that country have been cleared from wood, and brought into 

 a state of cultivation, through similar means. At present, they are judiciously laid out, 

 in farms of different sizes, with square straight-lined enclosures, and with detached farm- 

 steads situated within their areas ; the villages being generally small and mean — the mere 

 residences of labourers. Circumstances these are, which strongly evince that the com- 

 mon-field system never took place in this part of the island, as it did in the more central 

 parts of England. Ireland, also, has been enclosed (though not fenced) from time 

 immemorial. 



3486. The feudal organisation, having lost its original basis, has itself been mouldering 

 away, more particularly during the last century. A great majority of the appropriated 

 common-field lands and commons have been partially or wholly enclosed ; either by 

 piecemeal, each proprietor enclosing his own slip, — a very inconvenient mode of enclosure ; 

 or by general consent, the whole of the proprietors agreeing to commit their lands to the 

 care and judgment of arbiters, or commissioners, who, restoring the fields to their original 

 entirety, reparcelled them out in a manner more convenient to the several proprietors, 

 and laid each man's portion, which had consisted of numberless narrow slips, in one or 

 more well shaped grounds. 



3487. In England this requires to be effected by a separate act of parliament for each enclosure. In 

 these acts commissioners are named, or directed to be chosen by the proprietors, who, according to certain 

 instructions in the actor law, and the general principles of equity, divide the township among all who have 

 an interest in it It appears by the statute books, that from the year 177+ to the year 1813, no fewer than 

 two thousand six hundred and thirty-two acts of enclosure have been passed ; the average in the first 

 twenty years being thirty-seven, and in the last twenty years ninety-four. 



Oo 



