The Industrial Revolution

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 1027928145

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-159926

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Cunningham, William http://d-nb.info/gnd/128907487

Title:: The Industrial Revolution

Place of publication:: Cambridge

Publisher:: The University Press

Year of publication:: 1922

Scope:: xxii S., S. 404-886

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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A.D. 1689 1776. The ex- venses of mclosure were great ind Lhe procedure inflicted much hardship PARLIAMENTARY COLBERTISM »een pressed on with such rapidity in the seventeenth! and arly part of the eighteenth century as was the case toward ts close. Even though the advantage to agriculture was ~onsiderable?, the small farmers could not afford to have any part in this boon. It undoubtedly was not easy to re-allot the lands fairly, so that each of the landholders should have such a piece as was really the equivalent of the scattered strips and patch of meadow and pasture rights which he had previously possessed. This was a difficult duty, and one which was generally assigned to strangers, who might be supposed to make an award unbiassed by personal friendship, Apart from parliamentary and law expenses, the change was costly. The new farms were permanently separated from one another, and it was necessary to fence them; a very heavy burden was imposed on the village, and the shares of the poorer inhabitants for these expenses, involved many of them in debt and led to their ruin® It appears to have been the usual procedure, in the seventeenth century, to procure an agreement among those concerned, and to have this agreement authorised by a decision in Chancery or the Exchequer®. In the eighteenth century the method of proceeding by private bills came into vogue®; these were often passed through Parliament without sufficient enquiry, and when many of the inhabitants were quite unaware of the impending change or were at all events 258 I Houghton estimated in 1692 that a third of all the kingdom was in common iclds. Dr Plot had made this calculation for Staffordshire, and Houghton ap- parently generalised it for the kingdom as & whole: how rough his calculation is, may be gathered from the fact that he corrected his estimate of the acreage of England from 29,000,000 to 40,000,000 acres. Honghton, Collection of Letters for Improvement of Husbandry and Trade, 1 June, 1692. % Burke, Works, mm. 347. The enquiries of the Board of Agriculture, embodied in their General Report on Enclosures published in 1808, appear to be decisive on this point. See also the Report from the Select Committee on Enclosing Commons, 1844, v. 3. 3 A. Young, Northern Tour, 1. 223. } Leonard, op. cit. 108. $ In the reign of Anne there were 8 private bills for enclosure; in that of “eorge L, 16; under George IL., 226; and in the reign of George III., from 1760- 1775, there were 734 ; from 1776-97, 805 ; from 1797-1810, 956 ; and from 1810-20, 771; besides this, there was a general enclosure Act in 1801 (Tooke, I. 72; Prothero, Pioneers and Progress of English Farming, 257). See also Clifford, Private Bill Legislation, 1. p. 21. The period of parliamentary enclosing has heen investigated in great detail by Dr Slater, English Leasantiy.

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