Then again, the difficult task of re-allotting the wastes and open fields in proportion to the rights of the lord of the manor, the tithe-owner, and the parishioners, sometimes furnished an occasion for downright robbery of the poor. That staunch champion of high-farming and enclosures, Arthur Young, names many instances of shameful extortion on the part of landlord and attorneys. Where the village carried out its enclosure fairly and cheaply, the benefits were undoubtedly great. The wastes then became good pasture or tolerable tillage; and the common fields, previously cut up into small plots, and worked on a wasteful rotation, soon testified to the magic of individual ownership. A case in point was Snettisham, near Sandringham, where, as the result of the new wealth, the population increased by one fifth, while the poor-rate diminished by one half. Young also declared that large parts of Norfolk, owing to judicious enclosures, produced glorious crops of grain and healthy flocks fed on turnips and mangolds, where formerly there had been dreary wastes, miserable stock, and underfed shepherds. The dearth of the year 1795 brought to the front the question of a General Enclosure Act, for enabling parishes to adopt this reform without the expense of separately applying to Parliament. To devise a measure suitable to the wide diversities of tenure prevalent in English villages was a difficult task; but it had been carried out successfully in Scotland by the Act of 1695; and now, a century later, a similar boon was proposed for England by one of the most enterprising of Scotsmen. Sir John Sinclair was born in 1754 at Thurso Castle. Inheriting large estates in the county of Caithness, he determined to enter political life, and became member for Lostwithiel, in Cornwall. Differing sharply from Pitt over the Warren Hastings affair, he adopted the independent line of conduct natural to his tastes, and during the Regency dispute joined the intermediate party known as the Armed Neutrality.