49 



III.— COMMONS. 



PRINGLE wrote in 1794 that the " mode of farming is very near 

 the same throughout the country," such cannot be said of it to- 

 day — one of the most remarkable features during the past century has 

 been speciaHzation in all branches of industry — least perhaps in agri- 

 culture, but still to be distinctly observed even in the agriculture of 

 Westmorland. The changes which were essential to this were already 

 beginning before the century had commenced. An observer in 1787 

 wrote : " Cultivation has undergone a great change within a few years, 

 the change comes partly from improvements in roads, partly from the 

 spirit of industry diffused by the taking up and division of a great 

 number of commons. Boundary stones -are sometimes still sacred, 

 yet the number of hedges is mightily increased. I know not that there 

 can be a more remarkable passage on the history of rural civilization 

 than the substitution of hedges for the rude metes and boundaries 

 used in former times. This renders watchers of cattle useless." 



Whatever may have been the rights or wrongs of the general 

 question of the inclosure of the commons, it is certain that the carrying 

 out of the Acts hastened the development of agriculture in Westmor- 

 land to an extent greater even than their strongest advocates could 

 have contemplated. Immediately, a stimulus was given to agriculture 

 which carried it on a wave of industry for the first 50 or 60 years of 

 the century, since when progress has been on a gradually descending 

 or even rapidly retrogressive plane. Many acres of land which were 

 cvdtivated during this period of agricultural energy are gone, or are 

 rapidly going, back to a state of whin and bracken. 



A stimulus was needed to rouse the statesmen and farmers from 

 the lethargic state of happy contentment in which they lived and which 

 barely sufficed to give a return sufficient for the maintenance of their 

 family and stock from the land they tilled ; the stimulus was found 

 in the Inclosure Acts. Yet the whole of the progress in agriculture, 

 which was concurrent with the inclosure of the commons, must not 

 be attributed to that factor alone. The opening of the turnpike roads 

 and better means of communication, first by carriers' carts and coaches 



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