al discovering itself
only in procuring superfluous accommodation and enjoyment, in our
houses, in our furniture, in our establishments, in our eating and
drinking, our clothing, and our public diversions: we shall now see it
more beneficially employed in improving our territory itself: we shall
see part of our present opulence, with provident care, put out to usury
for posterity.

To what ultimate extent it may be wise or practicable to push inclosures
of common and waste lands may be a question of doubt, in some points of
view: but no person thinks them already carried to excess; and the
relative magnitude of the sums laid out upon them gives us a standard of
estimating the comparative situation of the landed interest. Your House,
this session, appointed a committee on waste lands, and they have made a
report by their chairman, an honorable baronet, for whom the minister
the other day (with very good intentions, I believe, but with little
real profit to the public) thought fit to erect a board of agriculture.
The account, as it stands there, appears sufficiently favorable. The
greatest number of inclosing bills passed in any one year of the last
peace does not equal the smallest annual number in the war, and those of
the last year exceed by more than one half the highest year of peace.
But what was my surprise, on looking into the late report of the Secret
Committee of the Lords, to find a list of these bills during the war,
differing in every year, and[48] larger on the whole by nearly one
third! I have checked this account by the statute-book, and find it to
be correct. What new brilliancy, then, does it throw over the prospect,
bright as it was before! The number during the last four years has more
than doubled that of the four years immediately preceding; it has
surpassed the five years of peace, beyond which the Lords' committees
have not gone; it has even surpassed (I have verified the fact) the
whole ten years of peace. I cannot stop here. I cannot advance a single
step in this inquiry without being obliged to cast my eyes back to the
period when I first knew the country. These bills, which had begun in
the reign of Queen Anne, had passed every year in greater or less
numbers from the year 1723; yet in all that space of time they had not
reached the amount of any two years during the present war; and though
soon after that time they rapidly increased, still at the accession of
his present Majesty they were far