ENCLOSURE--THE SMALL OWNER
The war period was one of great activity in enclosure; from 1798 to
1810 there were 956 Bills; from 1811-20, 771.[562]
It must be remembered, however, that the number of Acts is not a
conclusive test of the amount of enclosure, as there was a large
amount that was non-parliamentary: by the principal landlord, and by
freeholders who agreed to amicable changes and transfer, as at
Pickering, in Yorkshire.[563] Roughly speaking, about one-third of the
Acts were for enclosing commonable waste, the rest for enclosing open
and commonable fields and lands.[564] Owing to the expense an Act was
only obtained in the last resource. It was also because of the
expense[565] that many landlords desirous to enclose were unable to do
so, and therefore devoted their attention to the improvement of the
common fields. That agriculture benefited by enclosure there is no
possible doubt, but it was attended with great hardships. The
landowner generally gained, for his rents increased largely. In
twenty-three parishes of Lincolnshire, for instance, his rents doubled
on enclosure. But the expenses were so heavy that his gain was often
very small, and sometimes he was a loser by the process. As for the
farmers, the poorer ones suffered, for more capital was needed for
enclosed lands, and the process generally was so slow, taking from
two to six years before the final award was given, that many farmers
were thrown out in the management of their farms, for they did not
know where their future lands would be allotted. That the poor
suffered greatly is indubitable: 'By nineteen Enclosure Acts out of
twenty the poor are injured, in some cases grossly injured,' wrote
Young in 1801.[566] In the Acts it was endeavoured to treat them
fairly,[567] and allotments were made to them, or money paid on
enclosure in lieu of their rights of common, or small plots of land;
but the expense of enclosing small allotments was proportionately very
great, generally too great, and they had to be sold, while the sums of
money were often spent in the alehouse. The results of sixty-eight
Acts were investigated in the eastern counties, with the result that
in all but fifteen the poor were injured. It was generally found that
they had lost their cows.
Its effect on the smallholder is well described by Davis in his
_Report on Wilts_.[568] There, before enclosure, the tenants usually
occupied yard-lands consisting of a homestead, 2 acres of meadow, 18
acres of arable, generally in eighteen or twenty strips, with a right
on the common meadows, common fields and downs for 40 sheep, and as
many cattle as the tenant could winter with the fodder he grew. The 40
sheep were kept by a common shepherd with the common herd, were taken
every day to the downs and brought back every night to be folded on
the arable fields, the rule being to fold 1,000 sheep on a 'tenantry'
acre (three-quarters of a statute acre) every night.[569] In breeding
sheep regard was had to 'folding quality,' i.e. the propensity to
drop manure only after being folded at night, as much as to quality
and quantity of wool and meat. On enclosure the common flock was
broken up. The small farmer had no longer any common to turn his
horses on. The down on which he fed his sheep was largely curtailed,
the common shepherd was abolished, and the farmer had too few sheep to
enable him individually to employ a shepherd. Therefore he had to part
with his flock. Having no cow common and very little pasture land he
could not keep cows. In such circumstances the small farmer, after a
few years, succumbed and became a labourer, or emigrated, or went to
the towns.
In a pamphlet called _The Case of Labourers in Husbandry_, 1795, the
Rev. David Davies said, 'by enclosure an amazing number of people have
been reduced from a comfortable state of partial independence to the
precarious condition of mere hirelings, who when out of work
immediately come on the parish.' It has often been said that the poor
were robbed of their share in the land by the landowners; but as a
matter of fact it was the expense of securing the compensation allowed
them, much greater in proportion on small holdings than on large,
which went into the pockets of surveyors and lawyers, that did this.
It was also often through the farmer that the labourer was deprived of
his land when he had retained an acre or two after enclosure. Wishing
to make the labourer dependent on him, he persuaded the agent to let
the cottages with the farm, and the agent in order to avoid collecting
a number of small rents consented. As soon as the farmer had the
cottages he took the land from them and added it to his own. The
peasant's losses engaged the serious attention of many landlords; near
Tewkesbury, in 1773, the lord of the manor on enclosure, besides
reserving 25 acres for the use of the poor, allowed land to each
cottage sufficient to keep a horse or a cow, often added a small
building, and gave stocks for raising orchards. Even some of the
idlest were thereby made industrious, poor rates sank to 4d. in the £,
though the population increased, and the labourer always had for sale
some poultry, or the produce of his cow, or some fruit.[570]
In 1800 the Board of Agriculture, composed almost entirely of
landowners, noticing that the poor of Rutland and Lincolnshire, who
had land for one or two cows and some potatoes, had not applied for
poor relief, offered a gold medal for the most satisfactory account of
the best means of supporting cows on poor land, in a method applicable
to cottagers.[571] Young recommended that in the case of extensive
wastes every cottage on enclosure should be secured sufficient land on
which to keep a cow, the land to be inalienable from the cottage and
the ownership vested in the parish.
Lord Winchelsea[572] urged that a good garden should always go with a
cottage, and set the example himself, one which has been generally
followed in England by the greater landlords with much success. As may
be imagined, these schemes or others similar to them were put into
effect by the conscientious and energetic, but not by the apathetic
and careless. Further, an Act was passed in the fifty-ninth year of
George III, which enabled parishes to lease or buy 20 acres of land
for the employment of their poor.
In many cases, it must be allowed, the grazing of the commons was
often worth very little. Let one man, it was said in 1795, put a cow
on a common in spring for nothing, and let another pay a farmer 1s.
6d. a week to keep a cow of equal value on enclosed land. When both
are driven to market at Michaelmas the extra weight of the latter will
more than repay the cost of the keep, while her flow of milk meanwhile
has been much superior.
The Committee on Waste Lands of 1795 attributed the great increase in
the weight of cattle not only to the improved methods of breeding, but
to their being fed on good enclosed lands instead of wastes and
commons.[573] Even when commons were stinted they were in general
overstocked, while disease was always being spread with enormous loss
to the commoners. The larger holders, too, who had common rights,
often crowded out the smaller.
There were often, as we have seen, a large number of 'squatters' on
commons who had seized and occupied land without any legal title. As a
rule, if these people had been in possession twenty-one years their
title was respected; if not, no regard was very justly paid to them on
enclosure, and they were deprived of what they had seized.
Eden wrote when enclosure was at its height; he was a competent and
accurate observer, and this is his picture of the 'commoner':[574]
'The advantages which cottagers and poor people derive from commons
and wastes are rather apparent than real; instead of sticking
regularly to labour they waste their time in picking up a few dry
sticks or in grubbing on some bleak moor. Their starved pig or two,
together with a few wandering goslings, besides involving them in
perpetual altercations with their neighbours, are dearly paid for in
care, time, and bought food. There are thousands and thousands of
acres in the kingdom, now the sorry pastures of geese, hogs, asses,
half-grown horses, and half-starved cattle, which want but to be
enclosed to be as rich as any land now in tillage.'
Enclosure worked an important social revolution. Before it the
entirely landless labourer was rare: he nearly always had some holding
in the common field or a right on the common pasture. With enclosure
his holding or right had generally disappeared, and he deteriorated
socially. It was very unfortunate, too, that when enclosure was most
active domestic industries, such as weaving, decayed, and deprived the
labourer and his family of a badly needed addition to his scanty
income.
In its physical and moral effects the system of domestic manufactures
was immensely preferable to that of the crowded factory, while
economically it enabled the tillers of the soil to exist on farms
which could not support them by agriculture alone.
This uprooting of a great part of the agricultural population from the
soil by irresistible economic causes brought with it grave moral
evils, and created divisions and antagonisms of interest from which we
are suffering to-day.[575] If some such scheme as that of Arthur Young
or Lord Winchelsea had been universally adopted, this blot on an
inevitable movement might have been removed, and a healthy rural
population planted on English soil. Another result followed, the
labourer no longer boarded as a rule in his employer's house, where
the farmer worked and lived with his men; the tie of mutual interest
was loosened, and he worked for this or that master indifferently. One
advantage, however, arose, in that, having to find a home of his own,
he married early, but this was vitiated by his knowledge that the
parish would support his children, on which knowledge he was induced
to rely.
On the other hand, the farmer often rose in the social scale. With
the abandonment of the handicaps and restrictions of the common-field
system the efficient came more speedily to the front. It was they who
had amassed capital, and capital was now needed more than ever, so
they added field to field, and consolidated holdings.
The Act of 1845 did away with the necessity for private Enclosure
Acts, still further reducing the expense; and since that date there
have been 80,000 or 90,000 acres of common arable fields and meadows
enclosed without parliamentary sanction, and 139,517 acres of the same
have been enclosed with it,[576] besides many acres of commons and
waste.
In the _Report of the Committee of Enclosures_ of 1844,[577] there is
a curious description of the way in which common fields were sometimes
allotted. There were in some open fields, lands called 'panes',
containing forty or sixty different lands, and on a certain day the
best man of the parish appeared to take possession of any lot he
thought fit. If his right was called in question there was a fight for
it, and the survivor took the first lot, and so they went on through
the parish. There was also the old 'lot meadow' in which the owners
drew lots for choice of portions. On some of the grazing lands the
right of grazing sheep belonged to a man called a 'flockmaster', who
during certain months of the year had the exclusive right of turning
his sheep on all the lands of the parish.
Closely connected with the subject of enclosure is that of the partial
disappearance of the small owner, both the yeoman who farmed his own
little estate and the peasant proprietor. We have noticed above[578]
Gregory King's statement as to the number of small freeholders in
England in 1688, no less than 160,000, or with their families about
one-seventh of the population of the country. This date, that of the
Revolution, marks an epoch in their history, for from that time they
began to diminish in proportion to the population. Their number in
1688 is a sufficient answer to the exaggerated statement of
contemporaries in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as to the
depopulation caused by enclosures. Chamberlayne, in his _State of
Great Britain_, published at about the same time as Gregory King's
figures, says there were more freeholders in England than in any
country of like extent in Europe: '£40 or £50 a year is very ordinary,
£100 or £200 in some counties is not rare, sometimes in Kent and in
the Weald of Sussex £500 or £600 per annum, and £3,000 or £4,000 of
stock.' In the first quarter of the eighteenth century he was a
prominent figure. Defoe[579] describes the number and prosperity of
the Greycoats of Kent (as they were called from their homespun
garments), 'whose interest is so considerable that whoever they vote
for is always sure to carry it.'
Why has this sturdy class so dwindled in numbers, and left England
infinitely the weaker for their decrease? The causes are several;
social, economic, and political. The chief, perhaps, is the peculiar
form of Government which came in with the Revolution. The landed
gentry by that event became supreme, the national and local
administration was entirely in their hands, and land being the
foundation of social and political influence was eagerly sought by
them where it was not already in their hands.[580] At the same time
the successful business men, whose numbers now increased rapidly from
the development of trade, bought land to 'make themselves gentlemen'.
Both these classes bought out the yeomen, who do not seem to have been
very loath to part with their land. The recently devised system of
strict family settlements enabled the old and the new gentlemen to
keep this land in their families. The complicated title to land made
its transfer difficult and costly, so that there was little breaking
up of estates to correspond with the constant buying up of small
owners. To the smaller freeholder, as has been noticed, the enclosure
of waste land did much harm, for it was necessary to his holding.
Again, smaller arable farms did not pay as well as large ones, so they
tended to disappear. The decay of home industries was also a heavy
blow to the smaller yeoman and the peasant proprietor.
Under this combination of circumstances many of the yeomen left the
land. Yet though Young, less than a century after King and Davenant,
said that the small freeholder had practically disappeared, there were
at the end of the eighteenth century many left all over England, who
however largely disappeared during the war and in the bad times after
the war.[581] But a contrary tendency was at work which helped to
replenish the class. The desire of the Englishman for land is not
confined to the wealthy classes. At the end of the eighteenth century
men who had made small fortunes in trade were buying small properties
and taking the place of the yeomen.[582] In the great French War of
1793-1815, many yeomen, attracted by the high prices of land, sold
their properties, but at the same time many farmers, attracted by the
high prices of produce, which had often enriched them, bought
land.[583] During the 'good times' of 1853-75 many small holders, like
those of Axholme, noticed in the _Report_ of the Agricultural
Commission of 1893, bought land.
A new class of small owners also has sprung up, who, dwelling in or
near towns and railway stations, have bought small freeholds. The
return of the owners of land of 1872-6 gave the following numbers of
those owning land in England and Wales[584]:
Total number of owners of: Number. Acreage.
less than one acre 703,289 151,171
1 acre and under 10 121,983 478,679
10 " 50 72,640 1,750,079
50 " 100 25,839 1,791,605
100 " 500 32,317 6,827,346
The great majority of the first class here enumerated, those owning
less than one acre, do not concern us, as they were evidently merely
houses and gardens not of an agricultural character, but a large
number of the second class and most of the other three must have been
agricultural, though unfortunately no distinction is made. It will be
seen, therefore, that there were a considerable number of small
owners in England in 1872, and their numbers have probably increased
since. Many of them, however, are of the new class mentioned above,
and there appears to be no doubt that the number of the peasant
proprietors and of the yeomen of the old sort has much diminished,
especially in proportion to the growth of population.
FOOTNOTES:
[562] Cf. supra, p. 163.
[563] R. Marshall, _Rural Economy of Yorkshire_, p. 17 et seq.
[564] Slater, _English Peasantry and Enclosure_, p. 7.
[565] It was stated in the _Report of the Committee on Enclosures_
(1844), p. 31, that the ordinary expense of obtaining an Enclosure Act
was from £1,000 to £1,500. In 1814 the enclosure of three farms,
amounting to 570 acres, including subdivision fences and money paid to
a tenant for relinquishing his agreement, cost the landlord nearly
£4,000.--_Agricultural State of the Kingdom_ (1816), p. 116.
[566] _Enquiry into the Propriety of Supplying Wastes to the better
Support of the Poor_, p. 42.
[567] The usual clause in Enclosure Acts stated that the land should
be 'allotted according to the several and respective rights of _all_
who had rights and interests' in the enclosed property, and expenses
were to be borne 'in proportion to the respective shares of the people
interested'.
[568] pp. 8 et seq. Slater, _op. cit._ p. 113.
[569] Cf. Marshall's account of the common-field townships in
Hampshire at the end of the eighteenth century. Each occupier of land
in the common fields contributed to the town flock a number of sheep
in proportion to his holding, which were placed under a shepherd who
fed them and folded them on all parts of the township. A similar
practice was observed with the common herd of cows, which were placed
under one cowherd who tended them by day and brought them back at
night to be milked, distributing them among their respective owners,
and in the morning they were collected by the sound of the
horn.--_Rural Economy of Southern Counties_, ii. 351.
[570] _Report of Committee on Waste Lands_ (1795), p. 204. Ground was
frequently left by the Acts for the erection of cottages for the poor,
and special allotments were made to Guardians for the use of the poor,
in addition to the land allotted to all according to their respective
claims. Can any one doubt that if there had been a systematic robbery
of the smaller holders on enclosure they would not have risen 'en
masse'?
[571] Slater, _op. cit._ p. 133.
[572] _Agricultural State of the Kingdom_ (1816), p. 8.
[573] _Report_, p. 204.
[574] _State of the Poor_, pp. i, xviii.
[575] Lecky, _England in the Eighteenth Century_, vi. 191.
[576] Slater, _op. cit._ p. 191.
[577] _Report_, p. 27.
[578] _See_ above. Another estimate puts them at 180,000.
[579] _Tour_, i. (2), 37, 38.
[580] Toynbee, _Industrial Revolution_, p. 62.
[581] Hasbach, _op. cit._ p. 71.
[582] Marshall, _Review of Agriculture, Reports Western Department_,
p. 18.
[583] _Parliamentary Reports, Commissioners_ (1897), xv. 32.
[584] _Parliamentary Accounts and Papers_, lxxx. 21. The number of
those owning over 500 acres does not concern the small owner or the
yeoman class, but they were: from 500 acres to 1,000, 4,799; from
1,000 to 2,000, 2,719; from 2,000 to 5,000, 1,815; from 5,000 to
10,000, 581; from 10,000 to 20,000, 223; from 20,000 to 50,000, 66;
from 50,000 to 100,000, 3; over 100,000, 1. For the numbers of the
'holdings' of various sizes in 1875 and 1907 see below, p. 334. The
term 'holdings', however, includes freeholds and leaseholds.