Common fields.- The common fields of this county, as has been observed before, are in very small compass, a few only remain dispersed in different parts. As they are generally under nearly the same course of management, an account of one will serve for the rest ; I shall therefore select the parish and common of Glenfield, as being near the centre of the county.
This parish has had no modern enclosure ; its soil may be divided into 3 classes of management ; 1, old enclosures near the village ; 2, grass land, pasture and meadow; 3, tillage land.
The enclosures near the village are of ancient date ; the fences being full of timber trees, arrived at maturity, but in small proportion to the extent of the parish ; they are divided into yards and small pastures ; the grass land consists of head lands, ¹ and margins between the tillage land, including the low grounds or vallies, to which is to added considerable tract of meadow and pasture on either side of a brook which runs through the parish, and afterwards falls into the Soar. A good proportion of this meadow was under natural irrigation when I saw it, the preceding days having been rainy, but no vestiges of any assistance from art, except the curvature of the water-course, which prevents the water passing off too quickly. I have often supposed, upon viewing the curvature of water-courses, that the course was artificial, and a project of our ancestors to irrigate the land ; who observing the fertility occasioned by an overflow of water, rather chose to submit to the inconvenience of floods, than be deprived of this advantage. I have no doubt, but the natural channel of a stream and formed by the current would be much more rectilinear, than they are commonly found ; and that when men found the necessity of a channel to keep the water from off their land, they cut one with a deviating course, to drain the land in common, and to water it in floods.
The tillage land, which consists of a moderately darkish coloured or grayish loam, is in the usual 3 shift course of 1, fallow ; 2, wheat ; 3, beans, or oats, or barley ; the fallows, when I saw them in the middle of October, were part sown with wheat under furrow, part ploughed up for sowing with harrows, and part had ploughing yet to perform. A good deal of lime is used, part then spread and part laying in heaps. Some of the fallows but indifferently managed, seemed to have had but two ploughings ; but the stacks in the village of hay, and particularly of beans and grain, were much more considerable than in enclosed parishes.
I had no opportunity of learning particulars of tithes or of the folding of sheep, having no recommendation to, or acquaintance with any person ; and the day being rainy but few people were about : in spite of the weather I examined the field pretty minutely ; many sheep, and other stock, grazing indiscriminately in the grass plots notwithstanding the wheat sowing had commenced. In some of the furrows between the ridges the water lay in considerable depth, the cross guttering having been neglected.
That this parish produces more sustenance and employment for mankind, than the average of enclosed parishes in this county, of equal extent and staple of soil, I have not the least doubt ; but respecting nett profit, to the proprietor and occupier, I believe the balance to be in favour of enclosure. The occupation of common field land is attended with extra expense and inconvenience, both from distance, want of connection, and sustaining more trespass than enclosure ; but enclosures are generally thrown to pasture in this county, and stocked with sheep and cattle ; in which little labour is wanted, nor much attendance necessary.
In the common field system, if one half of the land be at grass, one-third of the remainder, which is one-sixth of the whole, wil be in wheat, one-sixth, other grain or pulse, one-sixth fallow, and three-sixths, meadow, pasture, &c.
Upon good deep soils that will bear this tillage, and produce good crops under it, perhaps to enclose it, and turn it to pasture, is not a measure of public utility. An acre of wheat upon such land, will, under good management, over and above seed, produce the annual bread for a family of four or five persons, which I suppose to be at least half their sustenance, living in as good a style as falls to the lot of the average of mankind ; from which it will follow, that an acre of wheat is equal to the full annual subsistence of two persons or more. An acre of such land in pasture, will not, I believe, furnish half the subsistence of a single person.
But even the common field system is capable of improvement; if the fallows were better managed, and the lots of the same person more contiguous, more produce might be obtained, at less expense. The bean stubble should be ploughed before winter, for the benefit of amelioration from frost, which I believe, seldom done. Where oats and barely are substituted for beans, as they often are on the lighter spots, green crops, or vetches, may be sown on their stubbles, ploughing up immediately after harvest, which would thus produce pasture, for the folding of sheep on in spring, without harassing them from the grass land, to the bare ploughed fallow.
But as enclosures have generally been a good speculation, and enable the proprietor to raise the rent, so as to pay him a good percentage, who is to prevent it, or to compel him to forego his advantage? and as there is a demand for beef and mutton, as well as bread, and the markets must be supplied, who can pretend to limit the extent of pasture, or coerce the management of private property? The only way then, is to counteract the effect of lessening the growth of corn upon good land, by bringing bad and unimproved land into cultivation, by an universal enclosure and improvement of waste lands, at present almost wholly unproductive : this is a matter of much greater public importance than common field enclosures, as being a kind of creation of food from nothing, or where nothing was produced before, and furnished employment for the multitude, and thereby affording them means of obtaining it.
It is generally understood, and is I believe an unquestionable fact, that in consequence of the enclosures which took place in this county, during the latter half of the last century, it does not now nearly find itself in bread, notwithstanding its fertility, and though its population is very little higher than that of the average of the kingdom, and it was before then a corn county.
The general effect of these enclosures has not however tended to diminish the population of the county, which has been gradually and uniformly increasing; those not wanted in agriculture, have found employment in the stocking trade, and other manufactures. - See Population.
Mr. Ainsworth says, that grain is allowed to be better produced in open fields, than in enclosures. In the latter, the hedges and trees occasion mildews, by confining the current of air. This is however prevented, in most enclosed countries, by a good old custom, which is pretty general, that of plashing hedges, always in winter after the wheat is sown, which not only lets in the current of air, but also secures the crop, by improving the fence, at the same time a few of the lowers branches are lopped from the trees, where that is permitted.
Worthington common field, near Stanton Harold, has been lately enclosed. I made the following memorandums upon it when an open field, 1801. "The parish is part old enclosure and grass plots, and the remainder in the three shift system ; 1, Fallow ; 2, wheat ; 3, beans, or barley, or oats promiscuously ; some of the promiscuous crops very foul with couch grass and weeds. I think there is more fault here in the management, than in the system ; some of the fallows appear only twice ploughed in the season ; first pin fallow in the spring or summer, and graze off with sheep, whatever grows spontaneously ; then plough back in autumn, and sow wheat.
It is now, 1807, enclosed with quicksets guarded by post and rail, and the improvement commenced by cleaner fallows and turnips.
On Enclosures, from Dr. Darwin. There can certainly be no reasonable objection to the enclosure of commons, or at least to the division of them into private property ; and the advantage of enclosing common pastures or meadows, cannot be doubted, as they can certainly be so much the better made of. Gardens also, and lands applied to raising commercial plants, as hemp, flax, &c.; or agricultural ones, for feeding cattle, as turnips, cabbages, potatoes, carrots, &c; certainly require to be enclosed.
The question or the utility of enclosure, therefore concerns only arable lands ; and as the produce of flesh, cheese, butter, &c. take a higher comparative at market, and are articles of greater luxury, as well as raised with fewer hands, and less care and trouble, than the products of arable land in corn, we may conclude that pasturage will prevail in all enclosed provinces over agriculture ; and as a much greater number of mankind can be supported by corn, raised on any given quantity of land, than by its produce of animal food, it follows, that an enclosed province will support a much smaller population ; and as the population depends upon the facility with which the parents can produce sustenance for their families, marriages will become fewer, and the people decrease, when an arable country is converted into pasturage.
One very important consequence of a country producing a surplus of corn, and exporting it even by means of a bounty, consists in its certainty of preventing famine, the most dreadful of human calamities, as in years of scarcity, the stream of exportation can be stopped.
When a great part of the land of any country becomes employed in pasture instead of cultivation, the inhabitants will become consumers of flesh, instead of consumers of grain, and will consequently decrease in numbers, from this want of a sufficient quantity of sustenance ; a nation should therefore be prevented from becoming too carnivorous, which was formerly done by religious fast days, twice a week ; and the cultivation of grain should be promoted, which has been successfully done, by bounties on the exportation of corn ; to which might be added, a prohibition of the destructive manufacture of grain into spirits, a chemical poison, Pytologia.
Mr. Malthus has however shown, that the distillery operates as a bounty upon the production of grain, by increasing the demand, and is so far salutary ; and the production of spirits from grain can be stopped in years of scarcity.
But the enclosure of waste lands, as a measure of public utility, may be illustrated and proved, by that of Ashby Welds, which from a cold and barren waste, grazing only a few half starved sheep, or mules, have produced large quantities of potatoes, and other human sustenance ; and in 1807, were covered with considerable breadths of grain, and much of it in good crops.