24 PKOGEESS IN OTHEK COUNTEIES 



damage to crops, the difficulty of good cultivation and 

 the cost of keeping herdsmen. As early as the 

 sixteenth century enclosures of land did begin on a 

 limited scale, either by the consent of the parties 

 interested or as a result of the sale of rights, and 

 sometimes even by force or fraud ; but the extent of 

 land enclosed was small. This tendency to enclosure 

 continued throughout the seventeenth century, and 

 wherever it took place the improvement which 

 resulted was the subject of comment, and the writers 

 of this period are very decided in their advocacy of 

 land enclosure, enumerating amongst other reasons 

 the liability of the cattle grazed on the common land 

 to diseases of all kinds, and to starvation in the 

 winter. They also referred to the way in which the 

 ownership of a small plot of land, together with 

 common grazing rights, disposed the smaller cultiva- 

 tors to a life of idleness and thriftlessness, without 

 offering them the possibility of adequate subsistence. 

 The stock reared on the commons are described as 

 dwarfed and miserable, and the state of the commons 

 as disgracefully bad. It is also noted that no winter 

 crops could be grown so long as the open fields were 

 subject to common rights of pasturage from August to 

 February. 



By the eighteenth century the great benefits of 

 enclosure were generally admitted, and no voice was 

 raised against the movement on any other ground 

 than the moral and social evil inflicted on the open- 

 field farmers and commoners who were ejected. The 



