[39] Arthur Young (“Eastern Tour,” Vol. I., p. 54) noticed this in 1771 in the great pasture closes of Northamptonshire: “All this fine grass on so excellent a soil lies all in the broad ridge and furrow.”
Before examining the evidence for and against rural depopulation in particular parts of England as the result of the extinction of common fields, it is well to consider the _a priori_ arguments put forward by Dr. Cunningham.
It is urged, in the first place, that owing to the relatively high price of corn and low price of wool, there was no motive for lay-down arable as pasture. Dr. Cunningham seems to ignore the fact that sheep and cattle produce mutton, beef, milk, butter, cheese, and hides, as well as wool, and it is by the profit to be derived from all of these products together, and not from any one of them, that the question of laying down in pasture will be determined. That laying down arable in pasture was profitable is indicated by the surprise Arthur Young expressed in 1768 that landlords did not enclose, and put the land to grass, on passing through Bedfordshire,[40] and by Adam Smith’s reference in “The Wealth of Nations” to the exceptional rent commanded by enclosed pasture.[41] We have, further, the clear statement of the Board of Agriculture: “Whereas the price of corn from 1760 to 1794 was almost stationary, the products of grass land have risen greatly throughout nearly the whole of that period.”[42] William Pitt, again, in a pamphlet published by the Board in 1812 on the “Food Produced from Arable and Grass Land,” says that through the “increased luxury of the times more beef and mutton and butter are used than formerly, even by equal numbers, and consequently more inducement to throw all the best corn to grass” (p. 35). William Culley adds in a footnote that “In the Northern Counties more rent per acre is given for ploughing than for grazing farms ... more rent is given for grazing than for arable farms in the Southern Counties.” If this was so when famine prices were paid for wheat, how much more in normal times?
[42] “General Report on Enclosures,” p. 41.
It is said, in the second place, that “the new agriculture gave more employment to labour than the old.” No doubt such an improvement as the substitution of well-hoed turnips for a fallow, the sowing of grass seeds with barley so as to produce a second crop, or feed for cattle after the barley was carried, both gave increased employment to labour, and tended to increased prosperity for the labouring as well as other classes. But these changes, as we have seen, and as Dr. Cunningham himself points out, might take place independently of enclosure, and might not follow if enclosure did take place. Whether they usually did follow upon enclosure is a question that has to be settled by an appeal to contemporary evidence. In taking this evidence reference must always be carefully made to the _time_ and the _place_.