RAPID INCREASE OF ENCLOSURES 215 



yearly more uncertain and more costly. The pace of enclosure 

 was immensely accelerated. In the first 33 years of the reign of 

 George III., there were 1355 Acts passed ; in the 23 years of the 

 wars with France (1793-1815) there were 1934. It is easy to attri- 

 bute the great increase of enclosures during this last period solely 

 to the greed of landlords, eager to profit by the high prices of 

 agricultural produce. That the land would not have been brought 

 into cultivation unless it paid to do so, may be admitted. But it 

 must in justice be remembered that an addition to the cultivated 

 area was, in existing circumstances, one of the two methods, which 

 at that time were alone available, of increasing the supply of food, 

 averting famine, and reducing prices. Economically, enclosures 

 can be justified. But the processes by which they were sometimes 

 carried out, were often indefensible, and socially their effects were 

 disastrous. On these points more will be said subsequently. Here 

 it will be enough to reiterate the statement that enclosure meant 

 not merely reclamation of waste ground, but partition of the com- 

 mons and extinction of the open-field system. It has been suggested, 

 on the authority of passages in his tract on Wastes, that Arthur 

 Young learned to deplore his previous crusade against village farms, 

 when he saw the effect of enclosures on rural life. What Young 

 deplored was the loss of a golden opportunity of attaching land 

 to the home of the cottager. But he never faltered in his con- 

 viction of the necessity of breaking up the open-fields and 

 dividing the commons. In the tract on Wastes he emphatically 

 asserts his wish to see all commons enclosed, and he was too great 

 a master of his subject not to know that without pasture the arable 

 village farms must inevitably perish. 



The other method of increasing the food supplies of the country 

 consisted of agricultural improvements. Here also the preparation 

 of the ground involved changes which bore hardly on small occupiers 

 of land. The new system of farming required large holdings, to 

 which a new class of tenant of superior education and intelligence 

 was attracted. It was on these holdings that capital could be 

 expended to the greatest advantage, that meat and corn could be 

 grown in the largest quantities, that most use could be made of 

 those mechanical aids which cheapened production. Costly im- 

 provements could not be carried out by small hand-to-mouth 

 occupiers, even if their obstinate adherence to antiquated methods 

 would have allowed them to contemplate the possibility of change. 



