“The fact is this: in the central counties of the kingdom, particularly Northamptonshire, Leicestershire, and parts of Warwick, Huntingdonshire, and Buckinghamshire, there have been within thirty years large tracts of the open field arable under that vile course, 1. fallow, 2. wheat, 3. spring corn, inclosed and laid down to grass, being much more suited to the wetness of the soil than corn.” Here he admits local depopulation takes place, though he claims that a greater _net_ produce is, as the result of enclosure, supplied by such districts to the rest of the kingdom. But then, he asks with regard to the opponents of such enclosure, “What will they say to the inclosures in _Norfolk_, _Suffolk_, _Nottinghamshire_, _Derbyshire_, _Lincolnshire_, _Yorkshire_ and all the northern counties? What say they to the sands of _Norfolk, Suffolk and Nottinghamshire_, which yield corn and mutton from _the force of INCLOSURE alone_? What say they to the Wolds of _York_ and _Lincoln_, which from barren heaths at 1_s._ per acre, are _by INCLOSURE alone_ rendered profitable farms? Ask _Sir Cecil Wray_ if without Inclosure he could advance his heaths by sainfoine from 1_s._ to 20_s._ an acre:--What say they to the vast tracts in the peak of Derby which _by INCLOSURE alone_ are changed from black regions of ling to fertile fields covered with cattle? What say they to the improvements of moors in the northern counties, where INCLOSURES alone have made these countries smile with culture which before were black as night?” He then proceeds to ridicule the view of his opponents, that the enclosure of waste, though desirable in itself, should as far as possible be so conducted as to create small farms and small properties, a view with which in later years, and after his tour in France, he very much sympathised. Into the merits of this controversy we need not go; what we have to note here is Arthur Young’s evidence to the fact that from about 1744 to 1774 there was simultaneously proceeding a rapid enclosure of waste in Norfolk, Suffolk, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Yorkshire, and Lincolnshire and the northern counties, by which the acreage under tillage was vastly increased, and a compensating enclosure of arable common fields in Northamptonshire, Leicestershire, Warwickshire, Huntingdonshire and Buckinghamshire, involving the conversion of arable to pasture, of small farms into much larger ones, and of the peasantry into urban labourers.