Note 36 — INTRODUCTION ENGLAND AT THE CLOSE OF THE AMERICAN WAR (1780–3)

W. Wales, op. cit., 44 et seq., enumerates several cases where the rural population declined, but he attributed that fact not to the enclosures (for he states that the enclosures of wastes, which were more numerous than those of the open fields, increased employment), but rather to the refusal of landlords to build cottages, though they charged higher rents than before. For the question of enclosures, however, see Dr. Gilbert Slater’s recent work on the subject (Constable and Co., 1907).