A 'Country Farmer', who wrote in 1786, states that many of the small farmers displaced by enclosures sold their few possessions and emigrated to America.[447] The growing manufacturing towns also absorbed a considerable number. That there was a considerable amount of hardship inflicted on small holders and commoners is certain, but industrial progress is frequently attended by the dislocation of industry and consequent distress; the introduction of machinery, for instance, often causing great suffering to hand-workers, but eventually benefiting the whole community. How many men has the self-binding reaping machine thrown for a time out of work? So enclosure caused distress to many individuals, but was for the good of the whole nation. The history of enclosure is really the history of progress in farming; the conversion of land badly tilled in the old common fields, and of waste land little more valuable than the prairies; into well-managed fruitful farms. That much of the common-field land when enclosed was laid down to grass is certainly true, and certainly inevitable if it paid best under grass.[448] No one can expect the holders of land naturally best suited for grass to keep it under tillage for philanthropic purposes. A vast number of the commoners too were idle thriftless beings, whose rights on a few acres enabled them to live a life of pilfering and poaching; and it was a very good thing when such people were induced to lead a more regular and respectable existence. The great blot on the process was that it made the English labourer a landless man. Compensation was given him at the time of enclosure in the shape of allotments or sums of money, but the former he was generally compelled to give up owing to the expense he had been put to at allotment, and the latter he often spent in the public-house.
At this date the proprietors of large estates who wished to enclose by Act of Parliament, generally settled all the particulars among themselves before calling any meeting of the rest of the proprietors. The small proprietor had very little say either in regulating the clauses of the Act, or in the choice of commissioners. Any owner of one-fifth of the land, however, could negative the measure and often used his right to impose unreasonable clauses. It is well known that the legal expenses and fencing were very costly. The enclosure commissioners too often divided the land in an arbitrary and ignorant manner, and there was no appeal from them except by filing a bill in Chancery. Accounts were hardly ever shown by the commissioners, and if a proprietor refused to pay the sums levied they were empowered to distrain immediately. All these evils attending enclosure made many who were eager to benefit by it very chary in commencing it.[449]