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.