t for final decision.

By measures such as these the greater part of the lands which had
remained unenclosed to modern times were transformed into enclosed
fields for separate cultivation or pasture. This process of enclosure
was intended to make possible, and no doubt did bring about, much
improved agriculture. It exerted incidentally a profound effect on the
rural population. Many persons had habitually used the common pastures
and open fields for pasture purposes, when they had in reality no
legal claim whatever to such use. A poor man whose cow, donkey, or
flock of geese had picked up a precarious livelihood on land of
undistinguished ownership now found the land all enclosed and his
immemorial privileges withdrawn without compensation. Naturally there
was much dissatisfaction. A popular piece of doggerel declared that:--

"The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common;
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from the goose."

Again, a small holder was frequently given compensation in the form of
money instead of allotting to him a piece of land which was considered
by the commissioners too small for effective use. The money was soon
spent, whereas his former claim on the land had lasted because it
could not readily be alienated.

A more important effect, however, was the introduction on these
enclosed lands of a kind of agriculture which the small landholder was
ill fitted to follow. Improved cultivation, a careful rotation of
crops, better fertilizers, drainage, farm stock, and labor were the
characteristics of the new farming, and these were ordinarily
practicable only to the man who had some capital, knowledge, and
enterprise. Therefore, coincidently with the enclosures began a
process by which the smaller tenants began to give up their holdings
to men who could pay more rent for them by consolidating them into
larger farms. The freeholders also who owned small farms from time to
time sold them to neighboring landowners when difficulties forced them
or high prices furnished inducements.

*60. Decay of Domestic Manufacture.*--This process would have been a
much slower one but for the contemporaneous changes that were going on
in manufacturing. As has been seen, many small farmers in the rural
districts made part of their livelihood by weaving or other domestic
manufacture, or, as more properly described, the domestic
manufacturers frequently eked ou