A GENERAL ENCLOSURE BILL 251 



enclosure of the land. Where the area was large, a portion of the 

 land was usually sold to pay the necessary expenses. But the 

 cost of fencing the portions allotted to individuals was thrown 

 upon the owners, and the smaller the allotment, the greater the 

 relative burden. Small men might well hesitate, apart from the 

 uncertainty of proving their title, to support an enclosure scheme, 

 since the value of their allotment might be almost swallowed up 

 in the expense of surrounding it with a hedge. 



Many small tracts of common land were left unenclosed, because 

 the extravagant cost threatened to absorb the possible profits of 

 the undertaking. A general Enclosure Act would, it was urged, 

 reduce the cost of enclosing small areas, promote uniformity of 

 legislative action by embodying the best methods of procedure 

 and the most requisite safeguards which experience suggested, and 

 provide means for overcoming opposition by modifying the existing 

 powers of resistance. On all these grounds, a Bill was framed by 

 the Board of Agriculture. It was strongly opposed in Parliament. 1 

 Many persons were interested in the continuance of the existing 

 procedure. " What," asks one of the Board's Reporters, " would 

 become of the poor but honest attorney, officers of Parliament, and 

 a long train of etc, etc, who obtain a decent livelihood from the 

 trifling fees of every individual inclosure Bill all these of infinite 

 use to the community, and must be encouraged whether the wastes 

 be enclosed or not ? . . . The waste lands, in the dribbling difficult 

 way they are at present inclosed, will cost the country upwards 

 of 20 millions to these gentry etc. which on a general Inclosure 

 Bill would be done for less than one." 2 The first Bill proposed 

 by the Board was rejected mainly through the influence of 

 these private interests. A further attempt was made in May, 1797, 

 when two Bills were introduced. The first was wrecked by the 

 opposition of titheowners. One of the chief advantages of enclosures 

 was that tithes were usually extinguished by an allotment of land 

 in lieu. This commutation of tithe was favoured by the Board, 

 which in consequence incurred the suspicion of being hostile to 

 the Established Church. The House of Lords seems to have been 

 particularly influenced by this view. Though the first of the two 

 Bills passed the Commons, it was rejected in the Upper House. 

 The second Bill did not advance beyond the Committee stage in 



1 Arthur Young's Lecture before the Board of Agriculture, May, 1809. 

 1 Brown's West Riding, App. I., p. 14. 



