“Their entertainments are as expensive as they are elegant, for it is no uncommon thing for one of these new created farmers to spend ten or twelve pounds at one entertainment; and to wash down delicate food, must have the most expensive wines, and these the best of their kind; and to set off the entertainment in the greatest splendour, an elegant sideboard of plate is provided in the newest fashion. As to dress no one that was not personally acquainted with the opulent farmer’s daughter can distinguish her from the daughter of a Duke by her dress, both equally wishing to imitate something, but they know not what. “View the farmer before the land was inclosed, and you will find him entertaining his friends with a part of a hog of his own feeding, and a draught of ale brewed from his own malt presented in a brown jug, or a glass, if it would bear it, which was the utmost of his extravagance: in those happy days you might view the farmer in a coat of the growth of his flock; and spun by his industrious wife and daughters, and his stockings produced from the same quarter of his industry, and his wife and daughters clad from their own hands of industry and their own flock.” As for the other side of this social change, the labourer’s side, it seemed so serious an evil to many even of the progressive landlords and agriculturists who strongly advocated enclosure, that they busied themselves to find a remedy. In 1897 the Board of Agriculture drew the attention of its members to a typical case. Mr. Thomas Bernard communicated an “Account of a Cottage and Garden near Tadcaster.” The cottager had held two acres of land and a common right at Poppleton for nine years, and there had lived comfortably and brought up six children. The enclosure of the parish turned him adrift, but he prevailed upon a landlord to let him have a piece of roadside waste for a garden, saying, “I will show you the _fashions_ on it.” The landlord was so delighted afterwards with the way in which this garden was cultivated, that he offered the man to let him have it rent free. Particular attention was directed to the man’s reply:--“Now, sir, you have a pleasure in seeing my cottage and garden neat: and why should not other squires have the same pleasure in seeing the cottages and gardens nice about them? The poor would then be happy and would love them and the place where they lived; but now every nook of land is let to the great farmers; and nothing left for the poor but to go to the parish.” (“Communications to the Board,” Vol. I. p. 404.)