on their grazing rights. Now,
a small grazier does not readily become a corn-grower. Even if he can
buy a plough and a team, he lacks the experience needful for success in
corn-growing. Accordingly, the small yeomen could neither compete with
the large farmers nor imitate their methods. While the few who succeeded
became prosperous, the many sank into poverty. These results may also be
ascribed to the expense and injustice too often attending the enclosures
of this period. Far from striking off at one blow the fetters of the old
system, as happened in France in 1789, English law required each parish
to procure its own Enclosure Act. Thus, when the parishioners at the
village meeting had decided to enclose the common fields and waste,
there occurred a long and costly delay until the parochial charter was
gained.

Then again, the difficult task of re-allotting the wastes and open
fields in proportion to the rights of the lord of the manor, the
tithe-owner, and the parishioners, sometimes furnished an occasion for
downright robbery of the poor. That staunch champion of high-farming and
enclosures, Arthur Young, names many instances of shameful extortion on
the part of landlord and attorneys. Where the village carried out its
enclosure fairly and cheaply, the benefits were undoubtedly great. The
wastes then became good pasture or tolerable tillage; and the common
fields, previously cut up into small plots, and worked on a wasteful
rotation, soon testified to the magic of individual ownership. A case in
point was Snettisham, near Sandringham, where, as the result of the new
wealth, the population increased by one fifth, while the poor-rate
diminished by one half. Young also declared that large parts of
Norfolk, owing to judicious enclosures, produced glorious crops of grain
and healthy flocks fed on turnips and mangolds, where formerly there had
been dreary wastes, miserable stock, and underfed shepherds.

The dearth of the year 1795 brought to the front the question of a
General Enclosure Act, for enabling parishes to adopt this reform
without the expense of separately applying to Parliament. To devise a
measure suitable to the wide diversities of tenure prevalent in English
villages was a difficult task; but it had been carried out successfully
in Scotland by the Act of 1695; and now, a century later, a similar boon
was proposed for England by one of the most enterprising of Scotsmen.
Sir John Sinclair was born in 1754 a