152 JETHRO TULL AND LORD TOWNSHEND 



any one can shew me where an Inclosure has been made, and 

 not at least half the inhabitants gone, I will throw up the 

 argument." 



In the passages quoted from these five books are outlined some 

 of the principal points in the dispute which was fought out in the 

 next eighty years. On the one side are pleaded the pernicious 

 effects of commons on the inhabitants of the neighbourhood and 

 their live-stock ; the absence of any legal title to many of the 

 rights claimed over pasture commons, and their frequent abuse by 

 commoners ; the obstacles to farming improvement which were pre- 

 sented by open arable fields ; the unprofitable use of land occupied 

 in common ; the commercial and productive advantages of enlarged, 

 separate holdings. On the other side is urged the injury which the 

 break-up of open-field farms and the partition of commons inflicted 

 on small owners and occupiers of land. Much was to be said from 

 both points of view. Many sweeping assertions were made, both 

 by advocates and opponents, which were true of one district but 

 untrue of another. Both socially and economically, the reclama- 

 tion of wastes, the extinction of open-field farms, the appropriation 

 of commons, might be justified by the urgent necessity of developing 

 the productiveness of the soil, and of increasing to the fullest extent 

 the food resources of the country. In favour of the first two 

 changes, most agricultural writers are agreed ; in dealing with the 

 commons, it is at least doubtful whether the best possible course 

 was always adopted. 



I From the productive point of view, the amount of waste land 



/ was a standing reproach to agriculture. The disappearance of the 



I wild boar and the wolf in the reign of Charles II. suggests some 



diminution of the area in which those animals had harboured. But 



in 1696 Gregory King had estimated the heaths, moors, mountains, 



and barren lands of England and Wales at ten million acres, or 



more than a quarter of the total area. In all probability, the 



\ estimate is wholly inadequate. But, assuming the calculation to 



I be approximately correct, it affords some measure of comparison 



1 with conditions at the close of the eighteenth century. In 1795 



I the Board of Agriculture l stated that over 22 million acres in Great 



1 Britain were uncultivated, of which 7,888,977 acres were in England 



land Wales. Here too there is probably a gross under-estimate. 



1 Report of the Committee of the Board of Agriculture (1795). The total 

 acreages are over-estimated. 



