In estimating the weight of this evidence, both as to depopulation and as to injury to the poor, it must be borne in mind that it is taken almost entirely from the mouths of advocates, and mostly very enthusiastic advocates, of enclosure. They are admissions of men who feel that the general case in favour of enclosure is so strong that they may well candidly admit the existence of some drawbacks. Of course, some advocates of enclosure are not disposed to make any admissions at all. Many urge the moral evils engendered by waste lands, as: “Where wastes and commons are most extensive, there I have perceived the Cottagers are the most wretched and worthless; accustomed to relie on a precarious and vagabond subsistence from land in a state of nature, when that fails they recur to pilfering, and thereby become a nuisance to their honest and industrious neighbours; and if the father of a family of this sort is withdrawn from society for his crimes, his children become burthensome to the parish. It may truly be said that for cottagers of this description the game is preserved, and by them destroyed; they are mostly beneath the law and out of reach of detection; and while they can earn four or five shillings, and sometimes more, in a night, by poaching, they will not be satisfied with 10_d._ or 1_s._ a day for honest labour.”[69] A not unusual style of argument is the following:-- [69] D. Walker, “Hertfordshire” (1794), p. 53. “To deprive the poor of that benefit, which, in their present state, they derive from the waste lands, must no doubt, at first view, sound harsh. But it ought to be remembered that in this wealthy county, where there is so much work to be done, and so few hands comparatively to do it, there are few poor that do not deserve to be so. Those persons who are disqualified to provide for the calls of human nature by the feebleness of infancy, the crushing hand of disease, or the infirmities of old age, cannot be said to be poor, because _all_ the landed property, situate within their respective parishes, is always liable to be charged with their maintenance.”[70] [70] John Clark, “Hereford” (1794), p. 27. After reading of the good fortune of these Herefordshire labourers, so much in demand in a wealthy county that the benefits derived from wastes and commons are of little concern to them, one naturally inquires, what were their wages? Day labourers earned in summer, “6_s._ a week and a gallon of drink to each man”;[71] in winter, 5_s._ a week and three quarts; in harvest, 14_d._ a day and meat and drink: the hours of labour being in harvest time and in winter as early and as late as they could see; in summer, not harvest, from 6 to 6. Leaving out the cider, this works out at a penny an hour, and a penny in 1794 would not buy very much more of the ultimate necessaries of life in Herefordshire than it will to-day. [71] _Ibid._, p. 29. “Drink” of course means cider.