About the same time that Young wrote these words there appeared a pamphlet written by 'A Country Gentleman' on the advantages and disadvantages of enclosing waste lands and common fields, which puts the arguments against enclosure very forcibly.[446] The writer's opinion was that it was clearly to the landowner's gain to promote enclosures, but that the impropriator of tithes reaped most benefit and the small freeholder least, because his expenses increased inversely to the smallness of his allotment. As to diminution of employment, he reckoned that enclosed arable employed about ten families per 1,000 acres, open field arable twenty families, a statement opposed to the opinion of nearly all the agricultural writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is surely an incontestable fact that enclosed land meant much better tillage, and better tillage meant more labour, the excessive amount of fallow necessary under the common-field system, from the inability to grow roots except by special arrangement, is alone enough to prove this. The same writer admitted that common pastures, wastes, &c., employed only one family per 2,000 acres, but enclosed pasture five families per 1,000 acres, and enclosed wastes sixteen families.
A 'Country Farmer', who wrote in 1786, states that many of the small farmers displaced by enclosures sold their few possessions and emigrated to America.[447] The growing manufacturing towns also absorbed a considerable number. That there was a considerable amount of hardship inflicted on small holders and commoners is certain, but industrial progress is frequently attended by the dislocation of industry and consequent distress; the introduction of machinery, for instance, often causing great suffering to hand-workers, but eventually benefiting the whole community. How many men has the self-binding reaping machine thrown for a time out of work? So enclosure caused distress to many individuals, but was for the good of the whole nation. The history of enclosure is really the history of progress in farming; the conversion of land badly tilled in the old common fields, and of waste land little more valuable than the prairies; into well-managed fruitful farms. That much of the common-field land when enclosed was laid down to grass is certainly true, and certainly inevitable if it paid best under grass.[448] No one can expect the holders of land naturally best suited for grass to keep it under tillage for philanthropic purposes. A vast number of the commoners too were idle thriftless beings, whose rights on a few acres enabled them to live a life of pilfering and poaching; and it was a very good thing when such people were induced to lead a more regular and respectable existence. The great blot on the process was that it made the English labourer a landless man. Compensation was given him at the time of enclosure in the shape of allotments or sums of money, but the former he was generally compelled to give up owing to the expense he had been put to at allotment, and the latter he often spent in the public-house.
At this date the proprietors of large estates who wished to enclose by Act of Parliament, generally settled all the particulars among themselves before calling any meeting of the rest of the proprietors. The small proprietor had very little say either in regulating the clauses of the Act, or in the choice of commissioners. Any owner of one-fifth of the land, however, could negative the measure and often used his right to impose unreasonable clauses. It is well known that the legal expenses and fencing were very costly. The enclosure commissioners too often divided the land in an arbitrary and ignorant manner, and there was no appeal from them except by filing a bill in Chancery. Accounts were hardly ever shown by the commissioners, and if a proprietor refused to pay the sums levied they were empowered to distrain immediately. All these evils attending enclosure made many who were eager to benefit by it very chary in commencing it.[449]
Then, as now, one of the commonest errors of farmers was that of taking too much land for their capital; Young considered £6 an acre necessary on an average, equal to more than £12 to-day; a sum which few farmers at any time have in hand when they take a farm. As for gentlemen farmers, who were then rushing into the business, they were warned that they had no chance of success if they kept any company or amused themselves with anything but their own business, unless perhaps they had a good bailiff.
Lime, one of the most ancient of manures, was then the most commonly used in England, 80 to 100 loads an acre being a common dressing, but many farmers were very ignorant of its proper use. Marl, which to-day is seldom used, was considered to last for twenty years, though for the first year no benefit was observable, and very little the second and the third, its value then becoming very apparent. In the last five years, however, its value was nearly worn out. But it was much to be questioned whether marl in its best state anywhere yields an increase of produce equal to that which a good manuring of dung will give.[450] Marl was applied in huge quantities on arable and grass, and often made the latter look like arable land so thickly was it spread.
At this date (1770) the average crops on poor, and on good land were[451]:
The cost of cultivating the latter, which may be given in full, as it affords an excellent example of the price of growing various crops, and the methods of their cultivation at this period, was as follows:
| First year, turnips: | £ | s. | d. | |
| Rent | 1 | 0 | 0 | |
| Tithe and 'town charges' | 8 | 0 | ||
| Five ploughings, @ 4s. | 1 | 0 | 0 | |
| Three harrowings | 1 | 0 | ||
| Seed | 6 | |||
| Sowing | 3 | |||
| Twice hand-hoeing | 7 | 0 | ||
| ———— | ||||
| £2 | 16 | 9 | ||
| ======= | ||||
It will be noticed there was no horse-hoeing.