At the present day this particular issue is dead, though a similar question, the question whether by means of the modern representative of the open field, viz., the allotment field, and modern representative of the ancient co-operative ploughing, viz., co-operative purchase of machines, manures and seeds, borrowing of capital, sale of produce, and perhaps co-operative stockbreeding, the decay of the agricultural population can be arrested, is a living issue. Nor is there any period of the nineteenth century in which any serious rural depopulation as a result of enclosure, and consequent laying down in pasture, of common fields, could be asserted. Since Free Trade began to seriously affect the prices of British grain--and that was not for a good many years after 1846--the common fields have been too few, and the other forces tending towards rural depopulation too great, for this particular force to be felt. And if it were felt, no one would seriously urge that the hardly pressed farmer should be compelled to cultivate the land in a manner wasteful of labour, in order that more labourers might be employed. In the earlier part of the nineteenth century war, protection and a rapidly growing wealth and population so effectively encouraged tillage that attempted prohibition of conversion of arable to grass would have been superfluous. Yet much, I think, can be learnt on the historical question from the present aspect of the country, even by anyone who merely travels by express train through the Midlands. Having spent a day in traversing the length and breadth of the great fields of Castor and Ailesworth, yellow with wheat and barley or recently cut stubble, I went straight through the county of Northamptonshire, seeing on either side scarcely anything but permanent pasture. From Northampton to Leicester was the same thing; again from Leicester to Uppingham. Just beyond Uppingham the cornfields become far more extensive; what were the Rutlandshire common fields till 1881 are still mainly under tillage. All this country of permanent pasture was mainly enclosed during the eighteenth century. Very frequently one can see on heavy land the old ridges piled up in the middle, ending in the middle of one field, crossing hedges, and showing plainly that very little, if any, ploughing has been done since the enclosure was effected.[39] The impression made on my mind by this apparent confirmation of all that the denouncers of “cruell Inclosiers” alleged was a very powerful one. [39] Arthur Young (“Eastern Tour,” Vol. I., p. 54) noticed this in 1771 in the great pasture closes of Northamptonshire: “All this fine grass on so excellent a soil lies all in the broad ridge and furrow.” Before examining the evidence for and against rural depopulation in particular parts of England as the result of the extinction of common fields, it is well to consider the _a priori_ arguments put forward by Dr. Cunningham.