And yet, through a chain of causation which can now be clearly perceived, but which at the time was not evident, though locally there might be a loss of gross produce, there was a gain throughout the kingdom. The key to the position was the operation of the Poor Laws.
Enclosure of arable fields and open field parishes in the Parliamentary Enclosure Belt in many ways greatly affected the operation of the Poor Laws.
By increasing rents it made a given poor-rate yield more. Further, the increase of rent reconciled the enclosing landowners to an increase in the poor-rate; more especially when it fell, not on them, but on their neighbours. For, as we have seen, the effect of enclosure in some parishes in a given neighbourhood was often to drive the poor into the parishes which remained unenclosed; these bore the burden, while the others reaped the profits.
As we have seen, enclosure, even when arable was not converted to pasturage, tended to ruin small owners and to eliminate small farmers, so that these had to join the ranks of agricultural labourers. The number of potential paupers was thus increased.
Destitution and recklessness among the labouring classes also increased. The common rights and small holdings of a few acres in the common fields were, at best, as we have seen, exchanged for a sum of money for which no investment offered itself, which therefore soon disappeared. With these small holdings disappeared also the hope of gradually taking more and more additional strips of land in the fields and the fear of losing the little already gained.
Early marriage was particularly encouraged by the change from the open field condition to enclosure. Before enclosure, the conditions of labour made the common field farmers who employed labourers, desire young unmarried men and women who would live in the farmhouse; such farm servants postponed marriage till they had accumulated some savings and could begin their married life with some resources—a cow, for example—over and above their labour. After enclosure, the enriched farming class preferred to pay board wages, and the young labourer with nothing to gain by waiting, with the assurance of Poor Law assistance if needed, naturally preferred to marry early.
Lastly, the disappearance of the yeoman class and of the connecting links between the largest farmers and the day labourers naturally tended to make the careful local administration of the Poor Law more difficult; it even to a great extent destroyed the motive for economical administration. The open field parish retained some of the social vitality of a self-governing community; men who had to concert together for the regulation of the fields, for the purchase of a parish bull, were more likely than the farmers of an enclosed parish to settle in concert questions of Poor Law relief in accordance with the interest of the parish as a whole.
This last point of connection between the enclosure and the Poor Law history of the country during the eighteenth century and the first part of the nineteenth is, however, interesting in itself, apart from the present argument. The point here laid stress upon is that whatever hardships for labourers and others resulted from the enclosure of arable fields, they did not starve, they did not eat less bread; they might be rendered miserable, but they married earlier and reared large families, somewhere or other. Poor Law relief ensured their offering an “effective demand” for bread. This effective demand compelled the increase of arable cultivation somewhere within the country; for foreign supplies were practically unavailable. The enclosure of waste for tillage and the enclosure of arable for pasture were economically inter-dependent.
The gross agricultural produce of the country as a whole was therefore increased by common field enclosure.