On the Agricultural Improvements of Lincolnshire. 315 
perfect a model for the improvement of moor-land lying towards 
the west side of England. But the importance of enclosing our 
wastes has led me too far. An objection, however, is made which 
carries us back for a moment to Lincolnshire. Enclosures, it is 
said, injure the poor. Now Lincolnshire is one new enclosure 
from Cambridgeshire up to the Humber: yet I know no county 
in which the labourer is better provided for. His wages vary 
from 10s. to 125. and 15s. a- week : he obtains a great deal of 
taskwork,* for more labour is thus paid here than elsewhere — 
filling dung-carts, for instance, at '2d. per load, and the harvest- 
waggon at Is. per acre, which diffuses activity through the whole 
operation. Good hands are at this moment earning at task- work 
from 15s. to 18s. weekly. His cottage — unlike the hovels of North- 
umberland and of Scotland, where one room on the ground holds 
the family, however numerous, by day and by night- — is neat and 
cheerful. Manv labourers have allotments, and some even cows. 
So far from injury accruing to the labourer by enclosures, it is 
clear in theory, as it is proved by the practical contrast of Lin- 
colnshire with Dorsetshire, or of Derbyshire with South Wales, 
that where the demand for labour is stationary, wages must be 
low, but that they will be raised wherever the plough breaks up 
new fields of employment. The Lincolnshire labourer living 
among new enclosures is well paid, clothed, lodged, and also, I 
should mention, well fed, sometimes with fresh meat. Tiie con- 
sequence is that being better fed they are able to work harder 
than other labourers ; and thus the farmers are repaid for their 
expenditure upon their men as well as upon their land. Indeed 
what Arthur Young said, five and forty years since, of the Lin- 
colnshire farmers may be said now : — I have not seen a set more 
liberal in any part of the kingdom : industrious, active, enlightened, 
free from all foolish and expensive show or pretence to emulate 
the gentry, they live comfortably and hospitably, as good farmers 
ought to live : and, in my opinion, are remarkably void of those 
rooted prejudices which sometimes are reasonably objected to this 
* The following remark is frora a Lincolnshire agiiculturist : — Whether 
" task" work be more in practice in Lincolnshire than elsewhere L from my 
retired habits, know not, but it is a practice highly beneficial both to the 
farmer and labourer ; the one gets infinitely more work done, and the 
other more wages and better habits ; for instance, in filling the carts with 
manure by the day the labourer seldom fills more than 8 or 9 loads, whereas 
for days together, this year, I had 160 loads of manure,' each load ]| cubic 
yards, filled by 10 labourers, at Ifc?. per load, and spread upon the fallows 
with 9 carts, 9 horses, and 9 of my own men, and generally finished by 2, 
never later than 3 p.m., sharp work of course, but the labourers push 
everything else on, no creeping, and they thus earn 2^. 4(^. a-day, and have 
ample time to do a little work in their own gardens in the evening. 
