First, one may review briefly what is told us by those who wrote on the technique of agriculture. Fitzherbert[284] and Hales in the sixteenth century, Norden and Lee in the seventeenth, make it quite plain that, apart from enclosures carried out by lords of manors, a movement is going on among the tenants which is also known by the name of enclosure. It has as its object the formation of compact fields out of the scattered strips, and the substitution of closes surrounded by hedges for rights of grazing over the common pasture, meadow, and waste. It has as its effects a great increase in the output of wheat, opportunities for better grazing and stock-breeding, and a consequent rise in the value of land; the improvement being partly due to psychological[285] reasons, to the fact that a man who has a free hand will put more labour into the land than one who is fettered by customary rules, partly to technical causes such as the better draining and cleaning of land which the enclosure of arable ground makes possible, the greater security offered against damage done by straying cattle, the improvement in the quality of pasture when it is no longer liable to be eaten bare by the beasts of a whole township. The method by which such a change takes place is re-allotment. The construction of hedges--enclosing--is simply the machinery by which the new lines of demarcation between one man's land and another's are drawn and kept firmly in their place; and though the word _enclosure_ gives a vivid picture of the alteration which is produced in the appearance of the country, _re-allotment_ or _redivision_ of land describes much better the process by which it is brought about. The ideal form of it is described by Fitzherbert.[286] All the landlords in a village must come to an agreement that their tenants should exchange their holdings with each other. An exact statement of the area of land in tillage and pasture held by each tenant must then be made. When this has been done, every man is "to change with his neighbour, and to leye them (_i.e._ the acres, which were formerly scattered) together, and to make him one several close in every field, to leye them together in one field and to make one several close for them all; and also another several close for his portion of his common pasture, and also his portion of his meadow in a several close by itself, and all kept in several both winter and summer. And every cottager to have his portion assigned to him according to his rent." Such enclosure does not, it is contended, interfere unfairly with any one's vested interests. It makes a spatial rearrangement of property, but it does not alter its economic distribution. It does not result in evictions or depopulation. It simply converts rights exercised jointly over a larger area into rights exercised individually over a smaller one. The map is dissolved into scattered pieces, but it is put together again; and when it is put together all the pieces are still there. The tenants part with shares in the common fields, meadows, and pastures, to get smaller fields, meadows, and pastures to themselves. The latter are more valuable than the former. What is lost in extension is gained in intension.