“In most open field parishes there are at a medium 40 farmers and 80 cottagers who hold their lands in common, and have right of commonage one with another. Suppose each person employs 6 labourers, we have in all 660 persons, men, women and children, who besides their Employment in Husbandry, carry on large branches of the Woollen and Linnen Manufactures.” With regard to the plea that hedging and ditching will employ many hands, he says: “This is so contrary to constant experience, that it hardly deserves to be taken notice of. I myself, within these 30 years past, have seen above 20 Lordships or Parishes inclosed, and everyone of them has been in a manner depopulated. If we take all the inclosed Parishes one with another, we shall find hardly ten inhabitants remaining, where there were an hundred before Inclosures were made. And in some parishes 120 families of Farmers and Cottagers, have in a few years been reduced to four, to two, aye, and sometimes to but one family. And if this practice of inclosing continues much longer, we may expect to see all the great estates ingrossed by a few Hands, and the industrious Farmers and Cottagers almost intirely rooted out of the kingdom. Raising Hedges and sinking ditches may indeed employ several hands for a year, or hardly so long, but when that is once over, the work is at an end.... Owners of inclosed Lands, if they have but a little corn to get in, are already forced to send several miles to open field parishes for Harvest men.” Six open field farms, averaging 150 acres each, and the little holdings of twelve cottagers, would be let together, after enclosure, as one grazing farm, and the total rent thus be raised from £300 to £600. But whereas one acre of arable land would previously have produced 20 bushels at 3_s._ per bushel, a gross return of £3; after enclosure it would contribute to the fattening of a bullock to the extent of 25_s._ The gross produce is decreased; but the net produce is increased. Of the £3 produced by the acre of common field under wheat, 50_s._ would go in expenses, leaving 6_s._ 8_d._ to the landlord and 3_s._ 4_d._ to the tenant. Of the 25_s._ produced by the same acre enclosed under grass, 13_s._ 4_d._ would go to the landlord, 11_s._ 8_d._ to the grazier. It is interesting in passing to note the association of common field agriculture with manufacture in the domestic stage indicated by this passage.