STORY OF THE ENGLISH LAND 27 



Enclosure Acts has been variously estimated. 

 Mr. Prothero puts it at 8| million acres, Mr. 

 Arthur Johnson at 7,308,806 acres, of which 

 6 1 millions were enclosed in the eighteenth 

 or nineteenth centuries, no less than one- 

 fifth of the total acreage of England 1 



No doubt a case can be made out in defence 

 of these wholesale enclosures. The minute 

 subdivisions of common fields caused great 

 waste of time and effort, and the cultivation 

 was often careless and clumsy. The common 

 pasturage again was in many cases quite 

 inadequate and the squatters on the waste 

 land were sometimes worthless and improvi- 

 dent poachers. The existence of a large 

 tract like Otmoor in Oxfordshire, undrained, 

 uncultivated, and good for little except the 

 feeding of geese, represented a thoroughly 

 uneconomic use of land ; the general produc- 

 tiveness of the soil was certainly increased by 

 the cultivation of land hitherto used solely for 

 the poorest type of grazing or the provision 

 of bedding, peat or firewood. Nevertheless, 

 the fact remains that these enclosures were 

 made not so much in the public interest as for 

 the benefit of a comparatively small number 

 of persons, many of them already in possession 

 of large estates. The Rev. Arthur Johnson, 

 in his admirable book, The Disappearance of 



