MOTIVES FOR AND RESULTS OF ENCLOSURE 553 
trace, and it is not easy at this distance of time to strike a A.D. 1689 
balance between the evil and the good. That natural 
economy and subsistence farming appear to have practically,’ es 
died out altogether, and that there was much more of a groeJarm: 
national market for farm produce, and therefore of effective 
competition between different districts in the country, are 
the two points to be chiefly noticed. 
There were three classes, at the beginning of the seven- on the part 
teenth century who practised subsistence farming, either as of artisans 
their sole avocation, or as an adjunct to some other means of 
earning a living. Among the last were comprised all village 
artisans; not only those who, as smiths, wheelwrights or 
shoemakers, supplied the needs of their neighbours, but also 
the domestic weavers who were found in large numbers? 
especially in the West of England. They had the opportunity 
of leading an independent and comfortable life, in healthy 
surroundings? such as would be greatly prized by the manu- 
facturing population of the present day“, but they did not 
have a very good reputation for industry®. They were 
not a welcome element in the rural districts, and it seemed 
that they would do better if they devoted themselves ex- 
clusively to manufacturing. With the progress of enclosure, 
they seem to have been more cut off from opportunities of 
eking out their subsistence with the help of small holdings 
or pasture rights. Thus these manufacturers became mere 
wage earners who were wholly dependent on the state of 
trade for their daily bread. When trade was slack they had 
no resource but to come upon the rates, and in periods of 
depression they were not unlikely to break out in riots® 
Besides these manufacturers, there was a large class of cottiers. 
cottiers and squatters on the waste who, had no obvious means 
of subsistence, besides the supplies they got from the land’. 
In the fens, they must have been a sturdy people, leading an 
1 H. Levy, op. cit. 9. 
3 On the growth of this class in the seventeenth century see BR. F. Butler in 
Victoria County Ilistory, Gloucester, 11. 165. $3 See below p. 564. 
4 On the desirability and practicability of reintroducing * subsistence-farming* 
hy wage-earners see my article on Back to the Land. in the Economic Review, 
October 1907. 
5 Rowland Vauchan. ». 81. © See below p. 562 n.1. 7 H. Levy, op. cit. &