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 20th February 1795; and in February 1796, Sir John Sinclair made his motion for "improving and inclosing the waste lands." His object was to grow more corn, and not to have to pay more than £1,000,000 sterling for bounties on imported corn (for to that it had come in the late scarcity). The Bill was "to facilitate dividing and inclosure." There was a great outcry from those who understood the importance of commons to small holdings. Sinclair meant well—his Bill was not intended to enrich the larger holders, but this was the almost invariable result. The only effect on the poor was to deprive them of the means of keeping live-stock. Enclosure has always been, as was said at the time, "an annihilation of public right for the advancement of separate property." The writer of a letter in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1798, signed "Agricola," says that it has been the custom in open fields of leaving one-third or one-fourth every year as of common right for all persons, "as well those of smaller property, and that not in land, as those of superior property and that in land, to turn their cattle, horses and sheep to feed, in proportion to their several legal holdings, whether land or cottage." "Agricola" does not believe in "the unlimited right of common—it is too absurd to be defended." But an experience of forty years has taught him that enclosure, as practised during that time, "has turned both country gentlemen and their overgrown tenants into arrogant and unfeeling monopolists. For when did you know a man, or combination of men, with exclusive rights and privileges, consider the public in any other light than as an object of plunder? "Agricola" explains that he calls the tenants "overgrown," because they occupy so "vast an extent of land" under such long leases, that they often bid defiance to their landlords! He admits that "the property of individuals" lies most inconveniently scattered in various parts of the open fields, so as to cause daily trespasses on each other's lands, and that commons are overstocked and neglected; but Commissioners could be empowered to allot to each proprietor a fair equivalent of land lying together, instead of being dispersed; it might even be enclosed, leaving one-third or other reasonable portion open every year to a general right of common.