COMMON LAND AND INCLOSURE.*

PnortssOR GorriTER has written a careful, leg ;thy, and dis- passionate survey of the processes by which the land of this country, either unenclosed, waste, or arable, came into agricultural use under full individual control. It is a fascinating study of a complex and difficult subject, and provides a mine of information and reference. Professor Gonner begins with an examination into the early system of common -cultivation, with its common rights of pasture and shack end of estover and turbary, and proceeds to show how the tendency of natural developinent has been to draw away frdie the haphazard and unorganized use of the land towards fuller and more reasonable management; how the growth of 'Depilation led to a demand. for the production of more clothing, end-so to at increase in the number of wool-bearing sheep and the area-of permanent pasture ; and how these and similar processes worked in different ways in different parts of the country; Next he showa how by various methods the old common rights became extinct; how before the eighteenth century inclosnre might be a matter of voluntary assent or due to disuse of privileges, or of arbitrary action; later, We come to the methods of inclosure of -the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and so to the distinct principle embodied in -a: Resolution of the House of Commons on Mardi '9th, 1837, "that in all Inclosnre Bills provision be Made for leaving' an open space sufficient for purposes of exercise and recreation of the neighbouring population." Here we get a recognition of What may be called moral rather than legal rights ; we pass from the rights of pasturing and tee-cutting, of plough bote and hay bote, to the idea of the open space and the value of fresh air and exercise. It is possibly this change of idea and the introduction of a moral aepeOt into an essentially economic problem which have led to much confused-thinking on the whole question of the owner- ship and use of hind. Professor Gonner, in any case, sums up-the Inclesure movement with a proper ressed for per- spective.. There may: have been injustices and individual hardshipe, but as a whole the irides-ere movement "was an inseparable' part of a hinch wider movement, and hende an estimate- Of its -results intist take into account" riotmerely the loeal consequences and the individual consequences it entailed, but the broad general effects Which it achieved or rendered possible." Generally speaking, the old system • CommOn ton54and` Thetoeure. By B. t. Gower,. /melon: 31aenanse and Co. [128. net.] of common right withheld land from its beat nee, and the wider movement which grew out of it was a change by which agriculture became not merely a means of subsistence is particular families, but a source of wealth to the nation.

The development Of the larger possibilities of economic farming due to inclosure becomes ,plain from an examination of agricultural work in detail. First comes the question of

arrangement and management. One managing brain can decide on the disposal of a certain number of acres better-than

twenty, each with a plan or purpose of his own which possibly conflicts with that of his neighbour. It might suit one man to drain, another to irrigate his land ; one might want to plough late, another to plou_gh early, and the'cattle ploughing later might turn at each furrow"s end on land already sown. Bad husbandry on one strip might fill the strips neighbouring it with weeds. Some would want to plant trees or hedges, and these in turn would take sunlight and nourishment from the ground near them. There could be no economy in ploughing small or separate strips; there would be waste of time in getting the cattle from one strip to another; there would be land which escaped ploughing, and it would be impossible to cross- plough or barrow effectively. Again, there could be no proper rotation of crops; roots, barley, clover, and wheat could not follow each other if the dividing husbandmen were unable to agree whether they would have pasture or arable. Turnips could not be grown if they could not be kept from a neighbour's sheep.

The interests of the stockbreeder and the cereal raiser or root- grower would be perpetually at variance. If, in the same way, we take the different classes of farm stock, we shall see that only by economic farming on a large scale can the.best results' be attained. Bakewell, the celebrated breeder of sheep and long-horned cattle, gave it to Arthur Young as his opinion based on experience, that " it two poor men buy each of them a cow in the spring, and one turns his into the forest, and the other pays a farmer ls. 6d. a week for the food of his among the farmer's cows, and at Michaelmas, if both are ..driven to the market and sold, the difference in the price will more than repay the weekly expense of the man who rejected the ideal

advantage of the common." And the contrast in sheep, he asserted, would be even greater. When cattle and sheep

belonging to a dozen or more owners were herded together,

scientific breeding was impossible. The open-field system, again, led to the spread of infection and disease. It became

necessary to prohibit sheep or horses with mange, and naturally such diseases as sheep-rot could be better dealt with-on inclosed land. As to animal products, it was soon discovered that in the greater quiet of the inclosed pastures, where sheep and cattle were not constantly driven to and fro, the farmer could get better milk and butter from his cows; in fact, scientific dairy-farming could only become possible by inclosure, The sole product over which there seems to have been a difference of opinion among agriculturists noting the changes consequent upon segregation of stock seems to have been wool.

It was confidently asserted by those opposed to inclosure that the quantity of fine wool was diminished. But opinion en

this point was not unanimous. It was argued, too, that even

if there was a possible deterioration in the quality of the wool, fineness is not an essential factor for making of cloth.

Howlett, in his " Inclosures, a Cause of Improved Agriculture," puts another argument pithily when he urges that after all "a fat oxen is better than a silkworm."

The general results of inclosure as regards the scientific, possibilities of agriculture are plain enough. . The effect on

rural population is less easy to estimate. If -it is argued that inclosure tended to drive into the urban -centres those who had been engaged in earning a livelihood bylinebandry, the answer would seem to be that the process of attraction from the husbandry of the countryside to the large industrial centre appears to have gone on equally in districts where the open-field system existed and in those where it was unknown. Inclostme and the growth of urban- population were. consequences of the same gradual change in the life of the community rather than cause and result of change. The tendency of the life of the nation was towards the creation of a-small class of employers and a large class of employed, and this tendency showed itself in rural-conditions in the consolidating of agricultural land into economic units. 'This tendency, as llama! and logical, Professor Gonner does not regard, and MO philoeopineal vieer- should _regard, as in any way to be leineAted; ritberl* be observed and chronicled; -But having observed sad

Chronicled it, the next step is to redress, whenever possible, the tendency of the 'urban centre to usurp not only the ebonomio unit of the farm, but the concomitant energy and health derived from the life of the farm, that is, the country as opposed to the town. Here; as we have said, we come to the stage reached to-day in our attitude towards common land and the common benefits which may be claimed by townsman and countryman alike. Discussion of the various aspects of this stage lies, of course, outside the scope of Professor Gonner's work. But the light which his book may be made to shed on present-day discussion is of the greatest possible value. It is a sober summary and history of a wide and far-reaching change in our national life; -it shows clearly the plain necessity and inevitability of much which a less well-balanced mind or a narrower view might regard as unfor- tunate or reactionary; in a word, it is a historian's judgment, on which a statesman, as apart from a party politician, might well found a creed and a movement.