This diversity in the effect of enclosure on the face of the country is a symbol of the diversity of its effect upon the material, social, and moral conditions of the local peasantry, who, like the land itself, may be said to have undergone Enclosure.
Where, as in Devon and Cornwall, in Cumberland and Westmoreland, the division of intermixed arable and meadow land took place early and gradually, and in subordination to the reclamation of waste, that reclamation itself being carried on steadily and gradually, the result was the creation of numberless small holdings and properties. A career was offered to the enterprising and laborious, and enterprise and industry grew accordingly,—“Devonshire myghty and Strong,” says Leland; and the great part taken by Devonshire in the national struggles in the reign of Elizabeth must be partly attributed to the reaction upon the character of the people of the conquest over the difficulties of bringing the rocky soil, woodland or moor, into cultivation: a conquest which made Devonshire husbandry famous for two generations, and “Devonshiring” a well-known term for a particular method of preparing waste land for cultivation.
Perhaps the greatest evil of Acts for the enclosure of waste in the past, was that they prevented such gradual reclamation and enclosure by peasant cultivators. At the present day the vital objection applies to enclosure of waste by any method that the area of such free open spaces is already sufficiently curtailed, that every remaining acre is becoming continually more precious, so that while public-spirited people fight for their preservation in remote places, in the neighbourhood of towns, citizens tax themselves to add to their area.
The enclosure of arable common fields, and of all the commonable lands of whole parishes within what I have called the Parliamentary Enclosure Belt, is of immeasurably greater historical importance. The ethics of such enclosure has been the subject of fierce debate for centuries; now the process is practically complete, and it is possible to apraise its results.
We have observed that with regard to the immediate results, capable of being contemporaneously verified, there is no real controversy between the disputants; it is on the inferences to be drawn as to the more ultimate results on the nation as a whole, and in the judgment pronounced upon the desirability of such results, that the dispute turned. The more candid disputants on either side admit the vital points in their opponents’ case: thus, for example, no opponent of enclosure denies that it tended to raise rents; and, on the other hand, it was the greatest advocate of enclosure who declared that “By nineteen out of twenty Enclosure Acts the poor are injured.”
The increase of rent was, of course, the motive of enclosure; and though there were exceptional cases in which the results were very disappointing to the promoters, as a rule the increase of rent was very great. Arthur Young gives the full financial details of twenty-three Acts for the enclosure of open field parishes in Lincolnshire.[108] The total rents before enclosure amounted to £15,504; on an average they were nearly doubled, the increase of rent obtained being £14,256, and the expenditure necessary to obtain this result was £48,217. Assuming that the money was borrowed at 6 per cent., there remained to the landowners a net profit of £11,363. These results were no doubt something above the average, but they were not exceptional. In Long Sutton the rent was raised from an average of 5s. per acre to between 30s. and 50s. per acre.[109]
The increase of rent was not a concern purely of the landowning class. As the advocates of enclosure continually pointed out, the rent was a pretty accurate test of the net produce of the agriculture of the parish; it was roughly proportional to the amount of food grown but not consumed on the spot, and sent away to markets to feed urban consumers at a distance. It was upon this net produce, they pointed out, that the taxable resources of the country depended. It was argued that an addition to the population of the country which was all engaged in gaining its own subsistence from the soil, added neither to the number of soldiers who could be enlisted for war without paralysing industry, nor to the power of the State to equip and support an army. On the other hand, a change by which a whole village of peasants who consumed nearly all the food they produced, was swept away and replaced by one or two highly rented farms, producing a less quantity of food, but sending much more to market, did supply the State with additional resources for the maintenance of its forces.
Private interests stimulated the appreciation of these public advantages. Money had to be borrowed to meet the heavy initial expenses of enclosure, and the banking system grew with the enclosure movement of the eighteenth century. And hence a secondary gain to the State. Increased opportunities for the remunerative investment of capital increased the supply of loanable capital, and made possible the enormous State loans by which the Napoleonic war was carried on. Lawyers, land surveyors, Parliamentary agents and others, reaped a copious harvest; and further, London in particular, and other towns in varying measure, grew in wealth by ministering to the increased “effective demands” of the enriched aristocracy.
But the opponents of enclosure were concerned with the gross rather than the net produce of land, and, as we have seen, it can be proved from the testimony of the advocates of enclosure and of impartial witnesses, that over a great part of the Midlands enclosure meant the conversion of arable to pasture, and local depopulation. The Board of Agriculture gives what may be considered an official estimate of the diminution of gross produce which would follow. An acre of common field arable might be expected to produce 2010 lbs. of bread in a three years course (that is, 670 lbs. of bread per annum), and 30 lbs. of meat per annum. The same area enclosed and converted to pasture would produce 176 lbs. of mutton, or 120 lbs. of beef. If we split the difference between the production of beef and mutton, we have on the average 148 lbs. of meat produced. There is on enclosure a gain of 113 lbs. of meat against a loss of 570 lbs. of bread; supposing the food values of equal quantities of bread and meat to be equal, there is a loss of 557 lbs. out of a total produce of 705 lbs.