The English Peasantry and the Enclosure of Common FieldsSlater, Gilbert
History
The English Peasantry and the Enclosure of Common Fields
Slater, Gilbert
Agriculture -- England; Inclosures; Peasants -- England; Village communities -- Great Britain
It is urged, in the first place, that owing to the relatively high
price of corn and low price of wool, there was no motive for lay-down
arable as pasture. Dr. Cunningham seems to ignore the fact that sheep
and cattle produce mutton, beef, milk, butter, cheese, and hides, as
well as wool, and it is by the profit to be derived from all of these
products together, and not from any one of them, that the question of
laying down in pasture will be determined. That laying down arable
in pasture was profitable is indicated by the surprise Arthur Young
expressed in 1768 that landlords did not enclose, and put the land
to grass, on passing through Bedfordshire,[40] and by Adam Smith’s
reference in “The Wealth of Nations” to the exceptional rent commanded
by enclosed pasture.[41] We have, further, the clear statement of the
Board of Agriculture: “Whereas the price of corn from 1760 to 1794
was almost stationary, the products of grass land have risen greatly
throughout nearly the whole of that period.”[42] William Pitt, again,
in a pamphlet published by the Board in 1812 on the “Food Produced from
Arable and Grass Land,” says that through the “increased luxury of the
times more beef and mutton and butter are used than formerly, even by
equal numbers, and consequently more inducement to throw all the best
corn to grass” (p. 35). William Culley adds in a footnote that “In the
Northern Counties more rent per acre is given for ploughing than for
grazing farms ... more rent is given for grazing than for arable farms
in the Southern Counties.” If this was so when famine prices were paid
for wheat, how much more in normal times?
[40] “Northern Tour,” 2nd. ed., p. 56.
[41] McCulloch’s ed., p. 69.
[42] “General Report on Enclosures,” p. 41.
It is said, in the second place, that “the new agriculture gave more
employment to labour than the old.” No doubt such an improvement as the
substitution of well-hoed turnips for a fallow, the sowing of grass
seeds with barley so as to produce a second crop, or feed for cattle
after the barley was carried, both gave increased employment to labour,
and tended to increased prosperity for the labouring as well as other
classes. But these changes, as we have seen, and as Dr. Cunningham
himself points out, might take place independently of enclosure, and
might not follow if enclosure did take place. Whether they usually did
follow upon enclosure is a question that has to be settled by an appeal
to contemporary evidence. In taking this evidence reference must always
be carefully made to the _time_ and the _place_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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