Landmarks in British Farming. 
27 
Holt, Woolmer, and Bere, but at Botley and at Waltham there 
were ten thousand unreclaimed acres. To the wastes and 
commons must be added the open fields. In 1764 out of 
8,500 parishes, 4,500 were unenclosed. A considerable number 
of these were reduced to separate farms before the close of the 
century, especially during the years of high prices for corn from 
1763 to 1775, when, as a pamphleteer writes (1780), farmers 
had willingly abandoned their pastures, and even cottagers 
ploughed up their orchards. Yet in 1794 Oxfordshire still had 
100 parishes unenclosed, Bucks 91,000 acres, Bedford 217,000 
acres, Essex 48,000 acres, Cumberland 150,000, Huntingdon 
130,000 acres; and nine-tenths of Cambridgeshire, one- third of 
Xorthants and Rutland, half of Berkshire, and the greater part 
of Wiltshire, were still cultivated in the open-field system. 
In the reign of George III. alone, 6,288,810 acres were en- 
closed. National necessities demanded the consolidation of 
small holdings, the extinction of open-field farmers, the enclo- 
sure and reclamation of wastes and commons. The step was 
justified by agricultural and economical arguments; but the 
social results were deplorable. The change was made at a difii- 
cult crisis. At the moment that small yeomen, open-field 
farmers, and commoners lost the grazing rights on which their 
existence depended, they also lost their domestic industries. 
During the French wars the price of necessai-ies doubled, yet 
wages remained the same. While agricultural profits were 
swelled by the stoppage of foreign grain supplies, war prices, 
and the corn laws, a mischievous poor law enabled farmers to 
compel rate-payers to pay their labour bills. The disbanding of 
soldiers, sailors, and militiamen at the close of the war, and the 
discharge of thousands of artisans from the introduction of 
machinery, increased the distress of the rural population, and 
resulted in the social discontent, agrarian outrages, and machine- 
breaking of the beginning of the present century. 
Compelled to choose between the artisan and peasant 
proprietors, small farmers or copyholders, England determined 
to sacrifice the latter class. The necessity was deplorable ; but, 
the choice once made, no efforts were spared to meet the crisis, 
which the rapid growth of population had caused. Improved 
roads, and increased facilities for the conveyance of heavy goods, 
opened up new markets to remote agriculturists, and broke 
down the barriers of custom and prejudice. Traditional pre- 
judices gave way before pi-actical experience. New implements 
were tried. Small’s plough, Meikle’s threshing machine, econo- 
mised labour. Patents were taken out for harrows (Heaton, 
1787), sowing-machines (Horn, 1784), drill ploughs (Praed, 
