'836 



[Dec. 



no demand for agricultural produce beyond the needs of the 

 producers themselves. If the land fed those who farmed it, 

 it might be said to have done its national duty. No distant 

 markets needed supplies of food. Each village community was 

 self-supporting and self-sufficing. Nothing vvas expected of the 

 soil except that it should meet the want of the necessaries of 

 life in the locality where it was situated. The inhabitants held 

 little intercourse with their neighbours. Except along the main 

 thoroughfares they had few means of communication. Such 

 local roads as existed were mere drift ways impassable in the 

 winter. Little was either sold or bought. Every group of 

 village farmers grew its own bread supply; its land or its live 

 stock provided its wants of food, drink, fuel or clothing. Agri- 

 culture, still in its comparative infancy, was unprogressive. 

 No improved methods or increased resources were offered to 

 farmers, which could only be introduced on open-fields with 

 the consent of a timid and ignorant body of partners, any one 

 of whom could refuse to have them adopted on the farm. The 

 system fostered stagnation, and starved enterprise; but so long 

 ;as population and farming remained stationary, no definite 

 economic loss counterbalanced its many social advantages. 

 Obviously, however, occasions might arise when the economic 

 loss might be so great as to outweigh the social gain. When 

 such occasions arose, the reconciliation of the two divergent 

 claims presented a very difficult and complex problem. It 

 cannot honestly be said that the wisdom of our legislators found 

 any satisfactory solution. The variety of interests involved, 

 and of rights enjoyed, some capable of legal proof, others 

 originating in encroachments, others existing only by 

 sufferance, required, if they were to be fairly adjusted, most 

 -careful discrimination. They sometimes received scant atten- 

 tion, and, under the pressure of economic necessity, the social 

 advantages were unduly sacrificed. 



Even in the infancy of farming the agricultural defects 

 inherent in the common cultivation of land by the open-field 

 system are many and obvious. As farming skill advanced, 

 the objections to it became more and more serious. At first, 

 and so long as the virgin soil retained its natural fertility, these 

 defects were mitigated. But their existence was very early 

 recognised by practical men. The waste of arable land was 

 considerable, owing to the innumerable balks and footpaths. 

 Still more serious was the waste of time and labour. The 

 buildings w^ere sometimes as much as two miles from the 



