Social England : a record of the progress of the people in religion, laws, learning, arts, industry, commerce, science, literature and manners, from the earliest times to the present day . spread of enclosures,though to contemporaries they seemed by no means an unmixedgood, must at least have added immensely to the productivepowers of the land. It is true that the area thus enclosed in thefirst sixty years of the century was a small amount (3,000,000acres) compared with what was done in the next period. It is Life THE TAXES AND THE PEOPLE. 175 1742] noticeable, too, that Edens figures sliow th
Social England : a record of the progress of the people in religion, laws, learning, arts, industry, commerce, science, literature and manners, from the earliest times to the present day . spread of enclosures,though to contemporaries they seemed by no means an unmixedgood, must at least have added immensely to the productivepowers of the land. It is true that the area thus enclosed in thefirst sixty years of the century was a small amount (3,000,000acres) compared with what was done in the next period. It is Life THE TAXES AND THE PEOPLE. 175 1742] noticeable, too, that Edens figures sliow that ao-ricultural rentswere ahnost stationary between 1689 and 1795. The prosperityof the rnral classes depended more, it is clear, on the prevalenceof by-industries, which were so marked a feature of the Easterncounties, and of Devon, Somerset, Gloucester, Worcester, and theAVest Riding. There, a child of four or five years old couldearn its own bread. Thus, of the five main processes requiredin the manufacture of cloth, three (the spinning of the yarn, theweaving of the cloth, the dressing of the cloth) were performedby cottagers and their families working at home. In agricultural. QU VV UX THE IKWELL AT 3IAXCIIESTEU. (From a view of ahout 1740.) wages proper there was little improvement: there was a rise of20 per cent., according to Professor Thorold Rogers; but it iscurious to find the stateuient, in the original seventeenth-centuryedition of Chamberlaynes Britanniai Notitia, that English daylabourers are better off in dwellings, diet, and apparel, thanfarmers in other countries, followed in the edition of 1755 bythis sio^nificant correction : Their wages being but 8d. or lOd. aday . . those who have large families find it very difficultfrequently to find them bread. The best general view of the country about this time is to Englandbe found in Defoes Tour, It leaves a strong general ^^ ^^s-impression of the wealth and ease that had come in since the 1 The republicat
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