for everybody except the landowner and tithe-owner—that is, it benefits the rich but injures the poor. The great farmer is afraid his rent will be raised, and he himself forced into a more costly way of farming. The small farmer fears his farm will be taken from him, to be "consolidated" with the large one. The cottager not only expects to lose his commons, but his work, and to be obliged to leave his native place. This writer says that a parish which before enclosure could provide employment for thirty families, after enclosure could barely support sixteen. And the "General Report on Enclosure" of 1808 admits the conclusion of both those writers, by saying that "to stock rich grass lands demands a far greater sum than open field arable … and if profit be measured by a percentage on the capital employed, the old system might, at the old rents, exceed the profits of the new." Thus the system which enriches one class by impoverishing another is admitted to be bad economically.
Marshall, writing in 1805, says[1] that West Devon has no traces of common fields. The cultivated lands are all enclosed; mostly in good-sized enclosures. "They have every appearance of having been formed from a state of common pasture, in which state some considerable part of the District still remains; and, what is observable, the better parts of those open commons have evidently been, heretofore, in a state of aration; lying in obvious ridges and furrows, with generally the remains of hedgebanks, and with faint traces of buildings." They look as though they had been permanently enclosed "and have been thrown up again through a decrease of population." Labourers have 6s. a week, and many, "honestly dishonest," say they cannot bring up a family on 6s. a week and honesty! Wages are too low, and what farmers save in wages they lose by pillage! All ranks EXCEPT farm labourers have had an increase of income with increase in prices;[2] so poor rates are increasing. Marshall points out
- ↑ "Rural Economy of the West of England."
- ↑ "The price of drudging labour in every country where there is plenty of hands is nearly the same. It is mere existence. What are at present the wages of common farm-labourers throughout the kingdom of Great Britain ? Say about four pecks of bread-corn per week. And what are they less than this in any other country?
