The 18th century, however, did not yet recognise as fully
 as the 19th, the identity between national wealth and the
 poverty of the people. Hence the most vigorous polemic, in
 the economic literature of that time, on the “enclosure of
 commons.” From the mass of materials that lie before me, I
 give a few extracts that will throw a strong light on the
 circumstances of the time. “In several parishes of
 Hertfordshire,” writes one indignant person, “24 farms,
 numbering on the average 50-150 acres, have been melted up
 into three farms.” [19] “In Northamptonshire and
 Leicestershire the enclosure of common lands has taken place
 on a very large scale, and most of the new lordships,
 resulting 679from the enclosure, have
 been turned into pasturage, in consequence of which many
 lordships have not now 50 acres ploughed yearly, in which
 1,500 were ploughed formerly. The ruins of former
 dwelling-houses, barns, stables, &c.,” are the sole
 traces of the former inhabitants. “An hundred houses and
 families have in some open-field villages dwindled to eight
 or ten.... The landholders in most parishes that have been
 enclosed only 15 or 20 years, are very few in comparison of
 the numbers who occupied them in their open-field state. It
 is no uncommon thing for 4 or 5 wealthy graziers to engross
 a large enclosed lordship which was before in the hands of
 20 or 30 farmers, and as many smaller tenants and
 proprietors. All these
 are hereby thrown out of their livings with their families
 and many other families who were chiefly employed and
 supported by them.” [20] It was not only the land that
 lay waste, but often land cultivated either in common or
 held under a definite rent paid to the community, that was
 annexed by the neighbouring landlords under pretext of
 enclosure. “I have here in view enclosures of open fields
 and lands already improved. It is acknowledged by even the
 writers in defence of enclosures that these diminished
 villages increase the monopolies of farms, raise the prices
 of provisions, and produce depopulation ... and even the
 enclosure of waste lands (as now carried on) bears hard on
 the poor, by depriving them of a part of their subsistence,
 and only goes towards increasing farms already too large.”
 [21] “When,”
 says Dr. Price, “this land gets into the hands of a few
 great farmers, the consequence must be that the little
 farmers” (earlier designated by him “a multitude of little
 proprietors and tenants, who maintain themselves and
 families by the produce of the ground they occupy by sheep
 kept on a common, by poultry, hogs, &c., and who
 therefore have little occasion to purchase any of the means
 of subsistence”) “will be converted into a body of men who
 earn their subsistence by working for others, and who will
 be under a necessity of going to market for all they
 want.... There will, perhaps, be more labour, because there
 will be more compulsion to it.... Towns and manufactures
 will increase, because more will be driven to them in quest
 of places and employment. This is the way in which the engrossing of
 farms naturally operates. And this is the way in which, for
 many years, it has been actually operating in this kingdom.”
 [22] He sums up
 the effect of the enclosures thus: “Upon the whole, the
 circumstances of the lower 680ranks of
 men are altered in almost every respect for the worse. From
 little occupiers of land, they are reduced to the state of
 day-labourers and hirelings; and, at the same time, their
 subsistence in that state has become more difficult.” [23] In fact,
 usurpation of the common lands and the revolution in
 agriculture accompanying this, told so acutely on the
 agricultural labourers that, even according to Eden, between
 1765 and 1780, their wages began to fall below the minimum,
 and to be supplemented by official poor-law relief. Their
 wages, he says, “were not more than enough for the absolute
 necessaries of life.”