ENCLOSURE (2)
In the year 1774, Lord North’s Government, which had already received
a bad bruise or two in the course of its quarrels with printers and
authors, got very much the worst of it in an encounter that a little
prudence would have sufficed to avert altogether. The affair has
become famous on account of the actors, and because it was the turning
point in a very important career. The cause of the quarrel has passed
into the background, but students of the enclosure movement will find
more to interest them in its beginning than in its circumstances and
development.
Mr. De Grey, Member for Norfolk, and Lord of the Manor of Tollington
in that county, had a dispute of long standing with Mr. William Tooke
of Purley, a landowner in Tollington, who had resisted Mr. De Grey’s
encroachments on the common. An action on this subject was impending,
but Mr. De Grey, who held, as Sir George Trevelyan puts it, ‘that the
law’s delay was not intended for Members of Parliament’ got another
Member of Parliament to introduce a petition for a Bill for the
enclosure of Tollington. As it happened, Mr. Tooke was a friend of one
of the clerks in the House of Commons, and this friend told him on
6th January that a petition from De Grey was about to be presented. A
fortnight later Mr. Tooke received from this clerk a copy of Mr. De
Grey’s petition, in which the Lord Chief Justice, brother of Mr. De
Grey was included. Mr. Tooke hurried to London and prepared a counter
petition, and Sir Edward Astley, the member for the constituency,
undertook to present that petition together with the petition from Mr.
De Grey. There were some further negotiations, with the result that
both sides revised their respective petitions, and it was arranged that
they should be presented on 4th February. On that day the Speaker said
the House was not full enough, and the petitions must be presented on
the 7th. Accordingly Sir Edward Astley brought up both petitions on
the 7th, but the Speaker said it was very extraordinary to present two
contrary petitions at the same time. ‘Bring the first petition first.’
When members began to say ‘Hear, hear,’ the Speaker remarked, ‘It is
only a common petition for a common enclosure,’ and the Members fell
into general conversation, paying no heed to the proceedings at the
Table. In the midst of this the petition was read, and the Speaker
asked for ‘Ayes and Noes,’ and declared that the Ayes had it. The
petition asking for the Bill had thus been surreptitiously carried
without the House being made aware that there was a contrary petition
to be presented, the contrary petition asking for delay. The second
petition was then read and ordered to lie on the Table.
In ordinary circumstances nothing more would have been heard of the
opposition to Mr. De Grey’s Bill. Hundreds of petitions may have been
so stifled without the world being any the wiser. But Mr. Tooke, who
would never have known of Mr. De Grey’s intention if he had not had
a friend among the clerks of the House of Commons, happened to have
another friend who was able to help him in a very different way in his
predicament. This was Horne, who was now living in a cottage at Purley,
reading law, on the desperate chance that a man, who was a clergyman
against his will, would be admitted to the bar. Flushed rather than
spent by his public quarrel with Wilkes, which was just dying down,
Horne saw in Mr. Tooke’s wrongs an admirable opportunity for a champion
of freedom, whose earlier exploits had been a little tarnished by his
subsequent feuds with his comrades. Accordingly he responded very
promptly, and published in the _Public Advertiser_ of 11th February,
an anonymous indictment of the Speaker, Sir Fletcher Norton, based on
his unjust treatment of these petitions. This letter scandalised the
House of Commons and drew the unwary Government into a quarrel from
which Horne emerged triumphant; for the Government, having been led on
to proceed against Horne, was unable to prove his authorship of the
letter. The incident had consequences of great importance for many
persons. It was the making of Horne, for he became Horne Tooke, with
£8000 from his friend and a reputation as an intrepid and vigilant
champion of popular liberty that he retained to the day of his death.
It was also the making of Fox, for it was this youth of twenty-five who
had led the Government into its scrape, and the king could not forgive
him. His temerity on this occasion provoked the famous letter from
North. ‘Sir, His Majesty has thought proper to order a new Commission
of the Treasury to be made out, in which I do not see your name.’ Fox
left the court party to lend his impetuous courage henceforth to very
different causes. But for social students the incident is chiefly
interesting because it was the cause of the introduction of Standing
Orders on Enclosure Bills. It had shown what might happen to rich men
under the present system. Accordingly the House of Commons set to work
to construct a series of Standing Orders to regulate the proceedings on
Enclosure Bills.
Most of these Standing Orders have already been mentioned in the
previous chapter, but we propose to recapitulate their main provisions
in order to show that the gross unfairness of the procedure, described
in the last chapter, as between the rich and the poor, made no
impression at all upon Parliament. The first Standing Orders dealing
with Enclosure Bills were passed in 1774, and they were revised in
1775, 1781, 1799, 1800 and 1801. These Standing Orders prevented a
secret application to Parliament by obliging promoters to publish
a notice on the church door; they introduced some control over the
extortions of commissioners, and laid down that the Bill presented
to Parliament should contain the names of the commissioners and a
description of the compensation to be given to the lord of the manor
and the impropriator of tithes. But they contained no safeguard at all
against robbery of the small proprietors or the commoners. Until 1801
there was no restriction on the choice of a commissioner, and it was
only in that year that Parliament adopted the Standing Order providing
that no lord of the manor, or steward, or bailiff of any lord or lady
or proprietor should be allowed to act as commissioner in an enclosure
in which he was an interested party.[87] In one respect Parliament
deliberately withdrew a rule introduced to give greater regularity and
publicity to the proceedings of committees. Under the Standing Orders
of 1774, the Chairman of a Committee had to report not only whether the
Standing Orders had been complied with, but also what evidence had been
submitted to show that all the necessary formalities had been observed;
but in the following year the House of Commons struck out this second
provision. A Committee of the House of Commons suggested in 1799 that
no petition should be admitted for a Parliamentary Bill unless a fourth
part of the proprietors in number and value signed the application, but
this suggestion was rejected.
The poor then found no kind of shelter in the Standing Orders. The
legislation of this period, from first to last, shows just as great an
indifference to the injustice to which they were exposed. The first
public Act of the time deals not with enclosures for growing corn,
but with enclosures for growing wood. The Act of 1756 states in its
preamble that the Acts of Henry VIII., Charles II. and William III. for
encouraging the growth of timber had been obstructed by the resistance
of the commoners, and Parliament therefore found it necessary to enact
that any owner of waste could enclose for the purpose of growing timber
with the approval of the majority in number and value of those who
had common rights, and any majority of those who had common rights
could enclose with the approval of the owner of the waste. Any person
or persons who thought themselves aggrieved could appeal to Quarter
Sessions, within six months after the agreement had been registered. We
hear very little of this Act, and the enclosures that concern us are
enclosures of a different kind. In the final years of the century there
was a succession of General Enclosure Bills introduced and debated in
Parliament, under the stimulus of the fear of famine. These Bills were
promoted by the Board of Agriculture, established in 1793 with Sir
John Sinclair as President, and Arthur Young as secretary. This Board
of Agriculture was not a State department in the modern sense, but a
kind of Royal Society receiving, not too regularly, a subsidy from
Parliament.[88] As a result of its efforts two Parliamentary Committees
were appointed to report on the enclosure of waste lands, and the
Reports of these Committees, which agreed in recommending a General
Enclosure Bill, were presented in 1795 and 1799. Bills were introduced
in 1795, 1796, 1797 and 1800, but it was not until 1801 that any Act
was passed.
The first Bills presented to Parliament were General Enclosure Bills,
that is to say, they were Bills for prescribing conditions on which
enclosure could be carried out without application to Parliament. The
Board of Agriculture was set on this policy partly, as we have seen,
in the interest of agricultural expansion, partly as the only way of
guaranteeing a supply of food during the French war. But these were
not the only considerations in the mind of Parliament, and we are able
in this case to see what happened to a disinterested proposal when it
had to pass through the sieve of a Parliament of owners of land and
tithes. For we have in the _Annals of Agriculture_[89] the form of the
General Enclosure Bill of 1796 as it was presented to the Government
by that expert body, the Board of Agriculture, and we have among the
Parliamentary Bills in the British Museum (1) the form in which this
Bill left a Select Committee, and (2) the form in which it left a
second Select Committee of Knights of the Shire and Gentlemen of the
Long Robe. We are thus able to see in what spirit the lords of the
manor who sat in Parliament regarded, in a moment of great national
urgency, the policy put before it by the Board of Agriculture. We
come at once upon a fact of great importance. In the first version it
is recognised that Parliament has to consider the future as well as
the present, that it is dealing not only with the claims of a certain
number of living cottagers, whose rights and property may be valued by
the commissioners at a five pound note, but with the necessities of
generations still to be born, and that the most liberal recognition
of the right to pasture a cow, in the form of a cash payment to an
individual, cannot compensate for the calamities that a society suffers
in the permanent alienation of all its soil. The Bill as drafted in the
Board of Agriculture enacted that in view of the probable increase of
population, a portion of the waste should be set aside, and vested in
a corporate body (composed of the lord of the manor, the rector, the
vicar, the churchwardens and the overseers), for allotments for ever.
Any labourer over twenty-one, with a settlement in the parish, could
claim a portion and hold it for fifty years, rent free, on condition
of building a cottage and fencing it. When the fifty years were over,
the cottages, with their parcels of land, were to be let on leases of
twenty-one years and over at reasonable rents, half the rent to go to
the owner of the soil, and half to the poor rates. The land was never
to be alienated from the cottage. All these far-sighted clauses vanish
absolutely under the sifting statesmanship of the Parliament, of which
Burke said in all sincerity, in his _Reflections on the Revolution in
France_, that ‘our representation has been found perfectly adequate
to all the purposes for which a representation of the people can be
desired or devised.’
There was another respect in which the Board of Agriculture was
considered to be too generous to the poor by the lords of the manor,
who made the laws of England. In version 1 of the Bill, not only those
entitled to such right but also those who have enjoyed or exercised
the right of getting fuel are to have special and inalienable fuel
allotments made to them: in version 2 only those who are entitled
to such rights are to have a fuel allotment, and in version 3, this
compensation is restricted to those who have possessed fuel rights
for ten years. Again in version 1, the cost of enclosing and fencing
small allotments, where the owners are unable to pay, is to be borne by
the other owners: in version 2, the small owners are to be allowed to
mortgage their allotments in order to cover the cost. The importance
of the proposal thus rejected by the Parliamentary Committee will
appear when we come to consider the practical effects of Enclosure
Acts. The only people who got their fencing done for them under most
Acts were the tithe-owners, a class neither so poor nor so powerless in
Parliament.
However this Bill shared the fate of all other General Enclosure Bills
at this time. There were many obstacles to a General Enclosure Bill.
Certain Members of Parliament resisted them on the ground that if it
were made legal for a majority to coerce a minority into enclosure
without coming to Parliament, such protection as the smaller commoners
derived from the possibility of Parliamentary discussion would
disappear. Powis quarrelled with the Bill of 1796 on this ground, and
he was supported by Fox and Grey, but his objections were overruled.
However a more formidable opposition came from other quarters.
Enclosure Acts furnished Parliamentary officials with a harvest of
fees,[90] and the Church thought it dangerous that enclosure, affecting
tithe-owners, should be carried through without the bishops being given
an opportunity of interfering. These and other forces were powerful
enough to destroy this and all General Enclosure Bills, intended to
make application to Parliament unnecessary.
The Board of Agriculture accordingly changed its plans. In 1800 the
Board abandoned its design of a General Enclosure Bill, and presented
instead a consolidating Bill, which was to cheapen procedure. Hitherto
there had been great diversities of form and every Bill was an
expensive little work of art of its own. The Act of 1801 was designed
to save promoters of enclosure some of this trouble and expense. It
took some forty clauses that were commonly found in Enclosure Bills and
provided that they could be incorporated by reference in private Bills,
thus cheapening legal procedure. Further, it allowed affidavits to be
accepted as evidence, thus relieving the promoters from the obligation
of bringing witnesses before the Committee to swear to every signature.
All the recognition that was given to the difficulties and the claims
of the poor was comprised in sections 12 and 13, which allow small
allotments to be laid together and depastured in common, and instruct
the commissioners to have particular regard to the convenience of the
owners or proprietors of the smallest estates. In 1813, the idea of
a General Bill was revived once more, and a Bill passed the House of
Commons which gave a majority of three-fifths in value the right to
petition Quarter Sessions for an enclosure. The Bill was rejected in
the Lords. In 1836 a General Enclosure Bill was passed, permitting
enclosure when two-thirds in number and value desired it, and in 1845
Parliament appointed central Commissioners with a view to preventing
local injustice.
It is unfortunate that the Parliamentary Reports of the debates on
General Enclosure Bills in the unreformed Parliament are almost as
meagre as the debates on particular Enclosure Bills. We can gather from
various indications that the rights of the clergy received a good deal
of notice, and Lord Grenville made an indignant speech to vindicate
his zeal in the cause of the Church, which had been questioned by
opponents. The cause of the poor does not often ruffle the surface of
discussion. This we can collect not only from negative evidence but
also from a statement by Mr. Lechmere, Member for Worcester. Lechmere,
whose loss of his seat in 1796 deprived the poor of one of their very
few champions in Parliament, drew attention more than once during the
discussions on scarcity and the high price of corn to the lamentable
consequences of the disappearances of the small farms, and recommended
drastic steps to arrest the process. Philip Francis gave him some
support. The general temper of Parliament can be divined from his
complaint that when these subjects were under discussion it was very
difficult to make a House.
* * * * *
It must not be supposed that the apathy of the aristocracy was part of
a universal blindness or anæsthesia, and that the method and procedure
of enclosure were accepted as just and inevitable, without challenge
or protest from any quarter. The poor were of course bitterly hostile.
This appears not only from the petitions presented to Parliament,
but from the echoes that have reached us of actual violence. It was
naturally easier for the threatened commoners to riot in places where
a single enclosure scheme affected a wide district, and most of the
records of popular disturbances that have come down to us are connected
with attempts to enclose moors that were common to several parishes.
An interesting example is afforded by the history of the enclosure
of Haute Huntre Fen in Lincolnshire. This enclosure, which affected
eleven parishes, was sanctioned by Parliament in 1767, but three years
later the Enclosure Commissioners had to come to Parliament to explain
that the posts and rails that they had set up had been destroyed ‘by
malicious persons, in order to hinder the execution of the said Act,’
and to ask for permission to make ditches instead of fences.[91]
An example of disturbances in a single village is given by the
Bedfordshire reporter for the Board of Agriculture, who says that when
Maulden was enclosed it was found necessary to send for troops from
Coventry to quell the riots:[92] and another in the _Annual Register_
for 1799[93] describing the resistance of the commoners at Wilbarston
in Northamptonshire, and the employment of two troops of yeomanry to
coerce them. The general hatred of the poor for enclosures is evident
from the language of Eden, and from statements of contributors to the
_Annals of Agriculture_. Eden had included a question about commons
and enclosures in the questions he put to his correspondents, and he
says in his preface that he had been disappointed that so few of his
correspondents had given an answer to this question. He then proceeds
to give this explanation: ‘This question, like most others, that can
now be touched upon, has its popular and its unpopular sides: and
where no immediate self-interest, or other partial leaning, interferes
to bias the judgment, a good-natured man cannot but wish to think
with the multitudes; stunned as his ears must daily be, with the
oft-repeated assertion, that, to condemn commons, is to determine
on depopulating the country.’[94] The writer of the _Bedfordshire
Report_ in 1808 says that ‘it appears that the poor have invariably
been inimical to enclosures, as they certainly remain to the present
day.’[95] Dr. Wilkinson, writing in the _Annals of Agriculture_[96]
in favour of a General Enclosure Bill says, ‘the grand objection to
the inclosure of commons arises from the unpopularity which gentlemen
who are active in the cause expose themselves to in their own
neighbourhood, from the discontent of the poor when any such question
is agitated.’ Arthur Young makes a similar statement.[97] ‘A general
inclosure has been long ago proposed to administration, but particular
ones have been so unpopular in some cases that government were afraid
of the measure.’
The popular feeling, though quite unrepresented in Parliament, was not
unrepresented in contemporary literature. During the last years of the
eighteenth century there was a sharp war of pamphlets on the merits
of enclosure, and it is noticeable that both supporters and opponents
denounced the methods on which the governing class acted. There is,
among others, a very interesting anonymous pamphlet, published in 1781
under the title of _An Inquiry into the Advantages and Disadvantages
resulting from Bills of Inclosure_, in which the existing practice is
reviewed and some excellent suggestions are made for reform. The writer
proposed that the preliminary to a Bill should be not the fixing of a
notice to the church door, but the holding of a public meeting, that
there should be six commissioners, that they should be elected by the
commoners by ballot, that no decision should be valid that was not
unanimous, and that an appeal from that decision should lie not to
Quarter Sessions, but to Judges of Assize. The same writer proposed
that no enclosure should be sanctioned which did not allot one acre to
each cottage.
These proposals came from an opponent of enclosure, but the most
distinguished supporters of enclosure were also discontented with the
procedure. Who are the writers on eighteenth-century agriculture whose
names and publications are known and remembered? They are, first of
all, Arthur Young (1741-1820), who, though he failed as a merchant and
failed as a farmer, and never ceased to regret his father’s mistake
in neglecting to put him into the soft lap of a living in the Church,
made for himself, by the simple process of observing and recording,
a European reputation as an expert adviser in the art which he had
practised with so little success. A scarcely less important authority
was William Marshall (1745-1818), who began by trading in the West
Indies, afterwards farmed in Surrey, and then became agent in Norfolk
to Sir Harbord Harbord. It was Marshall who suggested the creation of
a Board of Rural Affairs, and the preparation of Surveys and Minutes.
Though he never held an official position, it was from his own choice,
for he preferred to publish his own Minutes and Surveys rather than to
write them for the Board. He was interested in philology as well as in
agriculture; he published a vocabulary of the Yorkshire dialect and
he was a friend of Johnson, whom he rather scandalised by condoning
Sunday labour in agriculture under special circumstances. Nathaniel
Kent (1737-1810) studied husbandry in the Austrian Netherlands, where
he had been secretary to an ambassador, and on his return to England
in 1766 he was employed as an estate agent and land valuer. He wrote
a well-known book _Hints to Gentlemen of Landed Property_, and he had
considerable influence in improving the management of various estates.
He was, for a short time, bailiff of George III.’s farm at Windsor.
All of these writers, though they are very far from taking the view
which found expression in the riots in the Lincolnshire fens, or in the
anonymous pamphlet already mentioned, addressed some very important
criticisms and recommendations to the class that was enclosing the
English commons. Both Marshall and Young complained of the injustice
of the method of choosing commissioners. Marshall, ardent champion
of enclosure as he was, and no sentimentalist on the subject of the
commoners, wrote a most bitter account of the motives of the enclosers.
‘At this juncture, it is true, the owners of manors and tithes, whether
clergy or laity, men of ministry or men of opposition, are equally on
the alert: not however pressing forward with offerings and sacrifices
to relieve the present distresses of the country, but searching for
vantage ground to aid them in the scramble.’[98] Holding this view,
he was not unnaturally ill-content with the plan of letting the big
landlords nominate the commissioners, and proposed that the lord of the
soil and the owner or owners of tithes should choose one commissioner
each, that the owner or owners of pasturage should choose two, and that
the four should choose a fifth. Arthur Young proposed that the small
proprietors should have a share in the nomination of commissioners
either by a union of votes or otherwise, as might be determined.
The general engrossing of farms was arraigned by Thomas Stone, the
author of an important pamphlet, _Suggestions for rendering the
inclosure of common fields and waste lands a source of population and
of riches_, 1787, who proposed that in future enclosures farms should
be let out in different sizes from £40 to £200 a year. He thought
further that Parliament should consider the advisability of forbidding
the alienation of cottagers’ property, in order to stop the frittering
away of cottagers’ estates which was general under enclosure. Kent,
a passionate enthusiast for enclosing, was not less critical of the
practice of throwing farms together, a practice which had raised the
price of provisions to the labourer, and he appealed to landlords to
aid the distressed poor by reducing the size of their farms, as well as
by raising wages. Arbuthnot, the author of a pamphlet on _An Inquiry
into the Connection between the present Price of Provisions and the
Size of Farms_, by a Farmer, 1773, who had defended the large-farm
system against Dr. Price, wrote, ‘My plan is to allot to each cottage
three or four acres which should be annexed to it without power or
alienation and without rent while under the covenant of being kept in
grass.’
So much for writers on agriculture. But the eighteenth century produced
two authoritative writers on social conditions. Any student of social
history who wishes to understand this period would first turn to the
three great volumes of Eden’s _State of the Poor_, published in 1797,
as a storehouse of cold facts. Davies, who wrote _The Case of Labourers
in Husbandry_, published in 1795, is less famous than he deserves to
be, if we are to judge from the fact that the _Dictionary of National
Biography_ only knows about him that he was Rector of Barkham in
Berkshire, and a graduate of Jesus College, Oxford, that he received
a D.D. degree in 1800, that he is the author of this book, and that
he died, perhaps, in the year 1809. But Davies’ book, which contains
the result of most careful and patient investigation, made a profound
impression on contemporary observers. Howlett called it ‘incomparable,’
and it is impossible for the modern reader to resist its atmosphere of
reality and truth. This country parson gives us a simple, faithful and
sincere picture of the facts, seen without illusion or prejudice, and
free from all the conventional affectations of the time: a priceless
legacy to those who are impatient of the generalisations with which
the rich dismiss the poor. Now both of these writers warned their
contemporaries of the danger of the uncontrolled tendencies of the age.
Eden proposed that in every enclosure a certain quantity of land should
be reserved for cottagers and labourers, to be vested in the whole
district. He spoke in favour of the crofters in Scotland, and declared
that provision of this kind was made for the labouring classes in the
first settled townships of New England. Davies was still more emphatic
in calling upon England to settle cottagers and to arrest the process
of engrossing farms.[99]
Thus of all the remembered writers of the period who had any practical
knowledge of agriculture or of the poor, there is not one who did
not try to teach the governing class the need for reform, and the
dangers of the state into which they were allowing rural society
to drift. Parliament was assailed on all sides with criticisms and
recommendations, and its refusal to alter its ways was deliberate.
Of the protests of the time the most important and significant came
from Arthur Young. No man had been so impatient of objections to
enclosure: no man had taken so severe and disciplinary a view of
the labourer: no man had dismissed so lightly the appeals for the
preservation of the fragmentary possessions of the poor. He had
taught a very simple philosophy, that the more the landowner pressed
the farmer, and the more the farmer pressed the labourer, the better
it was for agriculture. He had believed as implicitly as Sinclair
himself, and with apparently as little effort to master the facts, that
the cottagers were certain to benefit by enclosure. All this gives
pathos, as well as force, to his remarkable paper, published under the
title _An Inquiry into the Propriety of applying Wastes to the better
Maintenance and Support of the Poor_.
The origin of this document is interesting. It was written in 1801, a
few years after the Speenhamland system had begun to fix itself on the
villages. The growth of the poor rates was troubling the minds of the
upper and middle classes. Arthur Young, in the course of his travels
at this time, stumbled on the discovery that in those parishes where
the cottagers had been able to keep together a tiny patch of property,
they had shown a Spartan determination to refuse the refuge of the Poor
Law. When once he had observed this, he made further investigations
which only confirmed his first impressions. This opened his eyes to the
consequences of enclosure as it had been carried out, and he began to
examine the history of these operations in a new spirit. He then found
that enclosure had destroyed with the property of the poor one of the
great incentives to industry and self-respect, and that his view that
the benefit of the commons to the poor was ‘perfectly contemptible,’
and ‘when it tempts them to become owners of cattle or sheep usually
ruinous,’[100] was fundamentally wrong. Before the enclosures, the
despised commons had enabled the cottager to keep a cow, and this,
so far from bringing ruin, had meant in very many cases all the
difference between independence and pauperism. His scrutiny of the
Acts convinced him that in respect of this they had been unjust. ‘By
nineteen out of twenty Inclosure Bills the poor are injured, and some
grossly injured.... Mr. Forster of Norwich, after giving me an account
of twenty inclosures in which he had acted as Commissioner, stated his
opinion on their general effect on the poor, and lamented that he had
been accessory to the injuring of 2000 poor people, at the rate of
twenty families per parish.... The poor in these parishes may say, and
with truth, “Parliament may be tender of property: all I know is that
I had a cow and an Act of Parliament has taken it from me.”’
This paper appeared on the eve of the Enclosure Act of 1801, the Act to
facilitate and cheapen procedure, which Young and Sinclair had worked
hard to secure. It was therefore an opportune moment for trying to
temper enclosure to the difficulties of the poor. Arthur Young made a
passionate appeal to the upper classes to remember these difficulties.
‘To pass Acts beneficial to every other class in the State and hurtful
to the lowest class only, when the smallest alteration would prevent
it, is a conduct against which reason, justice and humanity equally
plead.’ He then proceeded to outline a constructive scheme. He proposed
that twenty millions should be spent in setting up half a million
families with allotments and cottages: the fee-simple of the cottage
and land to be vested in the parish, and possession granted under
an Act of Parliament, on condition that if the father or his family
became chargeable to the rates, the cottage and land should revert to
the parish. The parishes were to carry out the scheme, borrowing the
necessary money on the security of the rates.[101] ‘A man,’ he told
the landlords, in a passage touched perhaps with remorse as well as
with compassion, ‘will love his country the better even for a pig.’
‘At a moment,’ so he concludes, ‘when a General Inclosure of Wastes is
before Parliament, to allow such a measure to be carried into execution
in conformity with the practice hitherto, without entering one voice,
however feeble, in defence of the interests of the poor, would have
been a wound to the feelings of any man not lost to humanity who had
viewed the scenes which I have visited.’
The appeal broke against a dense mass of class prejudice, and so far as
any effect on the Consolidating Act of 1801 is concerned, Arthur Young
might never have written a line. This is perhaps not surprising, for we
know from Young’s autobiography (p. 350) that he did not even carry the
Board of Agriculture with him, and that Lord Carrington, who was then
President, only allowed him to print his appeal on the understanding
that it was not published as an official document, and that the
Board was in no way identified with it. Sinclair, who shared Young’s
conversion, had ceased to be President in 1798. The compunction he
tried to awaken did affect an Act here and there. A witness before the
Allotments Committee of 1843 described the arrangements he contrived
to introduce into an Enclosure Act. The witness was Mr. Demainbray, an
admirable and most public-spirited parson, Rector of Broad Somerford
in Wiltshire. Mr. Demainbray explained that when the Enclosure Act for
his parish was prepared in 1806, he had been pressed to accept land in
lieu of tithes, and that he took the opportunity to stipulate for some
provision for the poor. As a consequence of his efforts, half an acre
was attached to each cottage on the waste, the land being vested in
the rector, churchwardens and overseers for the time being, and eight
acres were reserved for the villagers for allotment and reallotment
every Easter. This arrangement, which had excellent results, ‘every man
looking forward to becoming a man of property,’ was copied in several
of the neighbouring parishes. Dr. Slater has collected some other
examples. One Act, passed in 1824 for Pottern in Wiltshire, vested
the ownership of the enclosed common in the Bishop of Salisbury, who
was lord of the manor, the vicar, and the churchwardens, in trust for
the parish. The trustees were required to lease it in small holdings
to poor, honest and industrious persons, who had not, except in cases
of accident or sickness, availed themselves of Poor Law Relief.[102]
Thomas Stone’s proposal for making inalienable allotments to cottagers
was adopted in two or three Acts in the eastern counties, but the Acts
that made some provision for the poor do not amount, in Dr. Slater’s
opinion, to more than one per cent. of the Enclosure Acts passed before
1845,[103] and this view is corroborated by the great stress laid in
the Reports of the Society for Bettering the Condition of the Poor,
upon a few cases where the poor were considered, and by a statement
made by Mr. Demainbray in a pamphlet published in 1831.[104] In this
pamphlet Mr. Demainbray quotes what Davies had said nearly forty years
earlier about the effect of enclosures in robbing the poor, and then
adds: ‘Since that time many hundred enclosures have taken place, but in
how few of them has any reserve been made for the privileges which the
poor man and his ancestors had for centuries enjoyed?’
Some interesting provisions are contained in certain of the Acts
analysed in the Appendix. At Stanwell the commissioners were to set
aside such parcel as they thought proper not exceeding thirty acres, to
be let out and the rents and profits were to be given for the benefit
of such occupiers and inhabitants as did not receive parochial relief
or occupy lands and tenements of more than £5 a year, and had not
received any allotment under the Act. Middleton, the writer of the
_Report on Middlesex_, says that the land produced £30 a year,[105]
and he remarks that this is a much better way of helping the poor than
leaving them land for their use. We may doubt whether the arrangement
seemed equally attractive to the poor. It could not have been much
compensation to John Carter, who owned a cottage, to receive three
roods, twenty-six perches in lieu of his rights of common, which is
his allotment in the award, for three-quarters of an acre is obviously
insufficient for the pasture of a cow, but it was perhaps still less
satisfactory for James Carter to know that one acre and seven perches
were allotted to the ‘lawful owner or owners’ of the cottage and land
which he occupied, and that his own compensation for the loss of his
cow or sheep or geese was the cold hope that if he kept off the rates,
Sir William Gibbons, the vicar, and the parish officers might give
him a dole. The Laleham Commissioners were evidently men of a rather
grim humour, for, in setting aside thirteen acres for the poor, they
authorised the churchwardens and overseers to encourage the poor, if
they were so minded, by letting this plot for sixty years and using the
money so received to build a workhouse. A much more liberal provision
was made at Cheshunt, where the poor were allowed 100 acres. At
Knaresborough and Louth, the poor got nothing at all.
Before we proceed to describe the results of enclosure on village
life, we may remark one curious fact. In 1795 and 1796 there was some
discussion in the House of Commons of the condition of the agricultural
labourers, arising out of the proposal of Whitbread’s to enable the
magistrates to fix a minimum wage. Pitt made a long speech in reply,
and promised to introduce a scheme of his own for correcting evils
that were too conspicuous to be ignored. This promise he kept next
year in the ill-fated Poor Law Bill, which died, almost at its birth,
of general hostility. That Bill will be considered elsewhere. All
that we are concerned to notice here is that neither speech nor Bill,
though they cover a wide range of topics, and though Pitt said that
they represented the results of long and careful inquiry, hint at this
cause of social disturbance, or at the importance of safe-guarding the
interests of the poor in future enclosure schemes: this in spite of the
fact that, as we have seen, there was scarcely any contemporary writer
or observer who had not pointed out that the way in which the governing
class was conducting these revolutions was not only unjust to the poor
but perilous to the State.
It is interesting, in the light of the failure to grasp and retrieve
an error in national policy which marks the progress of these
transactions, to glance at the contemporary history of France.
The Legislative Assembly, under the influence of the ideas of the
economists, decreed the division of the land of the communes in 1792.
The following year this decree was modified. Certain provincial
assemblies had asked for division, but many of the villages were
inexorably hostile. The new decree of June 1793 tried to do justice
to these conflicting wishes by making division optional. At the same
time it insisted on an equitable division in cases where partition took
place. But this policy of division was found to have done such damage
to the interests of the poor that there was strenuous opposition, with
the result that in 1796 the process was suspended, and in the following
year it was forbidden.[106] Can any one suppose that if the English
legislature had had as swift and ready a sense for things going wrong,
the policy of enclosure would have been pursued after 1801 with the
same reckless disregard for its social consequences?
* * * * *
We have given in the last chapter the history of an enclosure project
for the light it throws on the play of motive in the enclosing class.
We propose now to give in some detail the history of an enclosure
project that succeeded for the light it throws on the attention which
Parliament paid to local opinion, and on the generally received views
as to the rights of the small commoners. Our readers will observe that
this enclosure took place after the criticisms and appeals which we
have described had all been published.
Otmoor is described in Dunkin’s _History of Oxfordshire_,[107] as a
‘dreary and extensive common.’ Tradition said that the tract of land
was the gift of some mysterious lady ‘who gave as much ground as she
could ride round while an oat-sheaf was burning, to the inhabitants of
its vicinity for a public common,’ and hence came its name of Oatmoor,
corrupted into Otmoor. Whatever the real origin of the name, which
more prosaic persons connected with ‘_Oc_’, a Celtic word for ‘water,’
this tract of land had been used as a ‘public common without stint ...
from remote antiquity.’ Lord Abingdon, indeed, as Lord of the Manor of
Beckley, claimed and exercised the right of appointing a moor-driver,
who at certain seasons drove all the cattle into Beckley, where those
which were unidentified became Lord Abingdon’s property. Lord Abingdon
also claimed rights of soil and of sport: these, like his other claim,
were founded on prescription only, as there was no trace of any grant
from the Crown.
The use to which Otmoor, in its original state, was put, is thus
described by Dunkin. ‘Whilst this extensive piece of land remained
unenclosed, the farmers of the several adjoining townships estimated
the profits of a summer’s pasturage at 20s. per head, subject to
the occasional loss of a beast by a peculiar distemper called the
moor-evil. But the greatest benefit was reaped by the cottagers,
many of whom turned out large numbers of geese, to which the coarse
aquatic sward was well suited, and thereby brought up their families in
comparative plenty.[108]
‘Of late years, however, this dreary waste was surveyed with longing
eyes by the surrounding landowners, most of whom wished to annex a
portion of it to their estates, and in consequence spared no pains to
recommend the enclosure as a measure beneficial to the country.’
The promoters of the enclosure credited themselves with far loftier
motives: prominent among them being a desire to improve the morals
of the poor. An advocate of the enclosure afterwards described the
pitiable state of the poor in pre-enclosure days in these words: ‘In
looking after a brood of goslings, a few rotten sheep, a skeleton of a
cow or a mangy horse, they lost more than they might have gained by
their day’s work, and acquired habits of idleness and dissipation and
a dislike to honest labour, which has rendered them the riotous and
lawless set of men which they have now shown themselves to be.’ A pious
wish to second the intention of Providence was also a strong incentive:
‘God did not create the earth to lie waste for feeding a few geese, but
to be cultivated by man, in the sweat of his brow.’[109]
The first proposal for enclosure came to Parliament from George, Duke
of Marlborough, and others on 11th March, 1801. The duke petitioned for
the drainage and the allotment of the 4000 acres of Otmoor among the
parishes concerned, namely Beckley (with Horton and Studley), Noke,
Oddington, and Charlton (with Fencott and Moorcott). This petition was
referred to a Committee, to consider amongst other things, whether the
Standing Orders with reference to Drainage Bills had been duly complied
with. The Committee reported in favour of allowing the introduction of
the Bill, but made this remarkable admission, that though the Standing
Orders with respect to the affixing of notices on church doors had been
complied with on Sunday, 3rd August, ‘it appeared to the Committee
that on the following Sunday, the 10th of August, the Person employed
to affix the like Notices was prevented from so doing at Beckley,
Oddington and Charlton, by a Mob at each Place, but that he read the
Notices to the Persons assembled, and afterwards threw them amongst
them into the Church Yards of those Parishes.’ Notice was duly affixed
that Sunday at Noke. The next Sunday matters were even worse, for no
notices were allowed to be fixed in any parish.
The Bill that was introduced in spite of this local protest, was
shipwrecked during its Committee stage by a petition from Alexander
Croke, LL.D., Lord of the Manor of Studley with Whitecross Green, and
from John Mackarness, Esq., who stated that as proprietors in the
parish of Beckley, their interests had not been sufficiently considered.
The next application to Parliament was not made till 1814. In the
interval various plans were propounded, and Arthur Young, in his
_Survey of Oxfordshire for the Board of Agriculture_, published in 1809
(a work which Dunkin describes as supported by the farmers and their
landlords and as having caught their strain), lamented the wretched
state of the land. ‘I made various inquiries into the present value
of it by rights of commonage; but could ascertain no more than the
general fact, of its being to a very beggarly amount.... Upon the
whole, the present produce must be quite contemptible, when compared
with the benefit which would result from enclosing it. And I cannot
but remark, that such a tract of waste land in summer, and covered
the winter through with water, to remain in such a state, within five
miles of Oxford and the Thames, in a kingdom that regularly imports to
the amount of a million sterling in corn, and is almost periodically
visited with apprehensions of want--is a scandal to the national
policy.... If drained and enclosed, it is said that no difficulty would
occur in letting it at 30s. per acre, and some assert even 40s.’ (p.
228).
When the new application was made in November 1814, it was again
referred to a Committee, who again had to report turbulent behaviour
in the district concerned. Notices had been fixed on all the church
doors on 7th August, and on three doors on 14th August, ‘but it was
found impracticable to affix the Notices on the Church doors of the
other two Parishes on that day, owing to large Mobs, armed with every
description of offensive weapons, having assembled for the purpose of
obstructing the persons who went to affix the Notices, and who were
prevented by violence, and threats of immediate death, from approaching
the Churches.’[110] From the same cause no notices could be affixed on
these two church doors on 21st or 28th August.
These local disturbances were not allowed to check the career of the
Bill. It was read a first time on 21st February, and a second time on
7th March. But meanwhile some serious flaws had been discovered. The
Duke of Marlborough and the Earl of Abingdon both petitioned against
it. The Committee, however, were able to introduce amendments that
satisfied both these powerful personages, and on 1st May Mr. Fane
reported from the Committee that no persons had appeared for the
said petitions, and that the parties concerned had consented to the
satisfaction of the Committee, and had also consented ‘to the changing
the Commissioners therein named.’ Before the Report had been passed,
however, a petition was received on behalf of Alexander Croke,[111]
Esq., who was now in Nova Scotia, which made further amendments
necessary, and the Committee was empowered to send for persons, papers
and records. Meanwhile the humbler individuals whose future was
imperilled were also bestirring themselves. They applied to the Keeper
of the Records in the Augmentation Office for a report on the history
of Otmoor. This Report, which is published at length by Dunkin,[112]
states that in spite of laborious research no mention of Otmoor could
be found in any single record from the time of William the Conqueror
to the present day. Even _Doomsday Book_ contained no reference to it.
Nowhere did it appear in what manor Otmoor was comprehended, nor was
there any record that any of the lords of neighbouring manors had ever
been made capable of enjoying any rights of common upon it. The custom
of usage without stint, in fact, pointed to some grant before the
memory of man, and made it unlikely that any lord of the manor had ever
had absolute right of soil. Armed, no doubt, with this learned report,
some ‘Freeholders, Landholders, Cottagers and Persons’ residing in four
parishes sent up a petition asking to be heard against the Bill. But
they were too late: their petition was ordered to lie on the Table, and
the Bill passed the Commons the same day (26th June) and received the
Royal Assent on 12th July.
The Act directed that one-sixteenth of the whole (which was stated
to be over 4000 acres) should be given to the Lord of the Manor of
Beckley, Lord Abingdon, in compensation of his rights of soil, and
one-eighth as composition for all tithes. Thus Lord Abingdon received,
to start with, about 750 acres. The residue was to be allotted among
the various parishes, townships and hamlets, each allotment to be held
as a common pasture for the township. So far, beyond the fact that
Lord Abingdon had taken off more than a sixth part of their common
pasture, and that the pasture was now divided up into different parts,
it did not seem that the ordinary inhabitants were much affected. The
sting lay in the arrangements for the future of these divided common
pastures. ‘And if at any future time the major part in value of the
several persons interested in such plot or parcels of land, should
require a separate division of the said land, he (the commissioner) is
directed to divide and allot the same among the several proprietors, in
proportion to their individual rights and interests therein.’[113]
We have, fortunately, a very clear statement of the way in which
the ‘rights and interests’ of the poorer inhabitants of the Otmoor
towns were regarded in the enclosure. These inhabitants, it must be
remembered, had enjoyed rights of common without any stint from time
immemorial, simply by virtue of living in the district. In a letter
from ‘An Otmoor Proprietor’ to the Oxford papers in 1830, the writer
(Sir Alexander Croke himself?), who was evidently a man of some local
importance, explains that by the general rule of law a commoner is
not entitled to turn on to the common more cattle than are sufficient
to manure and stock the land to which the right of common is annexed.
Accordingly, houses without land attached to them cannot, strictly
speaking, claim a right of common. How then explain the state of
affairs at Otmoor, where all the inhabitants, landed or landless,
enjoyed the same rights? By prescription, he answers, mere houses do
in point of fact sometimes acquire a right of common, but this right,
though it may be said to be without stint, is in reality always liable
to be stinted by law. Hence, when a common like Otmoor is enclosed, the
allotments are made as elsewhere in proportion to the amount of land
possessed by each commoner, whilst a ‘proportionable share’ is thrown
in to those who own mere houses. But even this share, he points out,
does not necessarily belong to the person who has been exercising the
right of common, unless he happens to own his own house. It belongs
to his landlord, who alone is entitled to compensation. A superficial
observer might perhaps think this a hardship, but in point of fact it
is quite just. The tenants, occupying the houses, must have been paying
a higher rent in consideration of the right attached to the houses, and
they have always been liable to be turned out by the landlord at will.
‘They had no permanent interest, and it has been decided by the law
that _no man can have any right in any common, as belonging to a house,
wherein he has no interest but only habitation_: so that the poor, as
such, had no right to the common whatever.’[114]
The results of the Act, framed and administered on these lines, were
described by Dunkin,[115] writing in 1823, as follows: ‘It now only
remains to notice the effect of the operation of this act. On the
division of the land allotted to the respective townships, a certain
portion was assigned to each cottager in lieu of his accustomed
commonage, but the delivery of the allotment did not take place,
unless the party to whom it was assigned paid his share of the expenses
incurred in draining and dividing the waste: and he was also further
directed to enclose the same with a fence. The poverty of the cottager
in general prevented his compliance with these conditions, and he was
necessitated to sell his share for any paltry sum that was offered.
In the spring of 1819, several persons at Charlton and elsewhere made
profitable speculations by purchasing these commons for £5 each, and
afterwards prevailing on the commissioners to throw them into one lot,
thus forming a valuable estate. In this way was Otmoor lost to the poor
man, and awarded to the rich, under the specious idea of benefitting
the public.’ The expenses of the Act, it may be mentioned, came to
something between £20,000 and £30,000, or more than the fee-simple of
the soil.[116]
Enclosed Otmoor did not fulfil Arthur Young’s hopes: ‘... instead
of the expected improvement in the quality of the soil, it has been
rendered almost totally worthless; a great proportion being at this
moment over-rated at 5s. an acre yearly rent, few crops yielding
any more than barely sufficient to pay for labour and seed.’[117]
This excess of expenses over profits was adduced by the ‘Otmoor
proprietor,’ to whom we have already referred, as an illustration of
the public-spirited self-sacrifice of the enclosers, who were paying
out of their own pockets for a national benefit, and by making some, at
any rate, of the land capable of cultivation, were enabling the poor to
have ‘an honest employment, instead of losing their time in idleness
and waste.’[118] But fifteen years of this ‘honest employment’ failed
to reconcile the poor to their new position, and in 1830 they were able
to express their feelings in a striking manner.[119]
In the course of his drainage operations, the commissioner had made a
new channel for the river Ray, at a higher level, with the disastrous
result that the Ray overflowed into a valuable tract of low land above
Otmoor. For two years the farmers of this tract suffered severe losses
(one farmer was said to have lost £400 in that time), then they took
the law into their own hands, and in June 1829 cut the embankments,
so that the waters of the Ray again flowed over Otmoor and left their
valuable land unharmed. Twenty-two farmers were indicted for felony for
this act, but they were acquitted at the Assizes, under the direction
of Mr. Justice Parke, on the grounds that the farmers had a right to
abate the nuisance, and that the commissioner had exceeded his powers
in making this new channel and embankment.
This judgment produced a profound impression on the Otmoor farmers
and cottagers. They misread it to mean that all proceedings under
the Enclosure Act were illegal and therefore null and void, and
they determined to regain their lost privileges. Disturbances began
at the end of August (28th August). For about a week, straggling
parties of enthusiasts paraded the moor, cutting down fences here
and there. A son of Sir Alexander Croke came out to one of these
parties and ordered them to desist. He had a loaded pistol with him,
and the moor-men, thinking, rightly or wrongly, that he was going to
fire, wrested it from him and gave him a severe thrashing. Matters
began to look serious: local sympathy with the rioters was so strong
that special constables refused to be sworn in; the High Sheriff
accordingly summoned the Oxfordshire Militia, and Lord Churchill’s
troop of Yeomanry Cavalry was sent to Islip. But the inhabitants were
not overawed. They determined to perambulate the bounds of Otmoor
in full force, in accordance with the old custom. On Monday, 6th
September, five hundred men, women and children assembled from the
Otmoor towns, and they were joined by five hundred more from elsewhere.
Armed with reap-hooks, hatchets, bill-hooks and duckets, they marched
in order round the seven-mile-long boundary of Otmoor, destroying
all the fences on their way. By noon their work of destruction was
finished. ‘A farmer in the neighbourhood who witnessed the scene gives
a ludicrous description of the zeal and perseverance of the women
and children as well as the men, and the ease and composure with
which they waded through depths of mud and water and overcame every
obstacle in their march. He adds that he did not hear any threatening
expressions against any person or his property, and he does not believe
any individuals present entertained any feeling or wish beyond the
assertion of what they conceived (whether correctly or erroneously) to
be their prescriptive and inalienable right, and of which they speak
precisely as the freemen of Oxford would describe their right to Port
Meadow.’[120]
By the time the destruction of fences was complete, Lord Churchill’s
troop of yeomanry came up to the destroying band: the Riot Act was
read, but the moormen refused to disperse. Sixty or seventy of them
were thereupon seized and examined, with the result that forty-four
were sent off to Oxford Gaol in wagons, under an escort of yeomanry.
Now it happened to be the day of St. Giles’ Fair, and the street of
St. Giles, along which the yeomanry brought their prisoners, was
crowded with countryfolk and townsfolk, most of whom held strong views
on the Otmoor question. The men in the wagons raised the cry ‘Otmoor
for ever,’ the crowd took it up, and attacked the yeomen with great
violence, hurling brickbats, stones and sticks at them from every side.
The yeomen managed to get their prisoners as far as the turning down
Beaumont Street, but there they were overpowered, and all forty-four
prisoners escaped. At Otmoor itself peace now reigned. Through the
broken fences cattle were turned in to graze on all the enclosures,
and the villagers even appointed a herdsman to look after them. The
inhabitants of the seven Otmoor towns formed an association called
‘the Otmoor Association,’ which boldly declared that ‘the Right of
Common on Otmoor was always in the inhabitants, and that a non-resident
proprietor had no Right of Common thereon,’ and determined to raise
subscriptions for legal expenses in defence of their right, calling
upon ‘the pecuniary aid of a liberal and benevolent public ... to
assist them in attempting to restore Otmoor once more to its original
state.’[121]
Meanwhile the authorities who had lost their prisoners once, sent down
a stronger force to take them next time, and although at the Oxford
City Sessions a bill of indictment against William Price and others
for riot in St. Giles and rescue of the prisoners was thrown out, at
the County Sessions the Grand Jury found a true Bill against the same
William Price and others for the same offence, and also against Cooper
and others for riot at Otmoor. The prisoners were tried at the Oxford
Assizes next month, before Mr. Justice Bosanquet and Sir John Patteson.
The jury returned a verdict which shows the strength of public opinion.
‘We find the defendants guilty of having been present at an unlawful
assembly on the 6th September at Otmoor, but it is the unanimous wish
of the Jury to recommend all the parties to the merciful consideration
of the Court.’ The judges responded to this appeal and the longest
sentence inflicted was four months’ imprisonment.[122]
The original enclosure was now fifteen years old, but Otmoor was
still in rebellion, and the Home Office Papers of the next two years
contain frequent applications for troops from Lord Macclesfield,
Lord-Lieutenant, Sir Alexander Croke and other magistrates. Whenever
there was a full moon, the patriots of the moor turned out and pulled
down the fences. How strong was the local resentment of the overriding
of all the rights and traditions of the commoners may be seen not
only from the language of one magistrate writing to Lord Melbourne
in January 1832: ‘all the towns in the neighbourhood of Otmoor are
more or less infected with the feelings of the most violent, and
cannot at all be depended on’: but also from a resolution passed by
the magistrates at Oxford in February of that year, declaring that no
constabulary force that the magistrates could raise would be equal to
suppressing the Otmoor outrages, and asking for soldiers. The appeal
ended with this significant warning: ‘Any force which Government may
send down should not remain for a length of time together, but that to
avoid the possibility of an undue connexion between the people and the
Military, a succession of troops should be observed.’ So long and so
bitter was the civil war roused by an enclosure which Parliament had
sanctioned in absolute disregard of the opinions or the traditions or
the circumstances of the mass of the people it affected.
FOOTNOTES:
[87] Most private Enclosure Acts provided that if a commissioner died
his successor was to be somebody not interested in the property.
[88] Sir John Sinclair complained in 1796 that the Board had not even
the privilege of franking its letters.--_Annals of Agriculture_, vol.
xxvi, p. 506.
[89] Vol. xxvi. p. 85.
[90] From the Select Committee on the Means of Facilitating Enclosures
in 1800, reprinted in _Annual Register_, 1800, Appendix to Chronicle,
p. 85 ff., we learn that the fees received alone in the House of
Commons (Bill fees, small fees, committee fees, housekeepers’ and
messengers’ fees, and engrossing fees) for 707 Bills during the
fourteen years from 1786 to 1799 inclusive amounted to no less than
£59,867, 6s. 4d. As the scale of fees in the House of Lords was about
the same (Bill fees, yeoman, usher, door-keepers’ fees, order of
committee, and committee fees) during these years about £120,000 must
have gone into the pockets of Parliamentary officials.
[91] See Appendix A (5).
[92] _Bedford Report_, 1808, p. 235.
[93] _Annual Register_, 1799, Chron., p. 27.
[94] Eden, 1. Preface, p. xviii.
[95] _Bedford Report_, p. 249. Cf. writer in Appendix of _Report on
Middlesex_, pp. 507-15, ‘a gentleman of the least sensibility would
rather suffer his residence to continue surrounded by marshes and
bogs, than take the lead in what may be deemed an obnoxious measure.’
This same writer urges, that the unpopularity of enclosures would be
overcome were care taken ‘to place the inferior orders of mankind--the
cottager and industrious poor--in such a situation, with regard to
inclosures, that they should certainly have some share secured to them,
and be treated with a gentle hand. Keep all in temper--let no rights be
now disputed.... It is far more easy to prevent a clamour than to stop
it when once it is raised. Those who are acquainted with the business
of inclosure must know that there are more than four-fifths of the
inhabitants in most neighbourhoods who are generally left out of the
bill for want of property, and therefore cannot possibly claim any part
thereof.’
[96] Vol. xx. p. 456.
[97] Vol. xxiv. p. 543.
[98] _The Appropriation and Enclosure of Commonable and Intermixed
Lands_, 1801.
[99] ‘Allow to the cottager a little land about his dwelling for
keeping a cow, for planting potatoes, for raising flax or hemp.
2ndly, Convert the waste lands of the kingdom into _small_ arable
farms, a certain quantity every year, to be let on favourable
terms to industrious families. 3rdly, Restrain the engrossment and
over-enlargement of farms. The propriety of those measures cannot, I
think, be questioned.’--_The Case of Labourers in Husbandry_, p. 103.
[100] _Annals of Agriculture_, vol. i. p. 52.
[101] This scheme marks a great advance on an earlier scheme which
Young published in the first volume of the _Annals of Agriculture_. He
then proposed that public money should be spent in settling cottagers
or soldiers on the waste, giving them their holding free of rent and
tithes for three lives, at the end of which time the land they had
redeemed was to revert to its original owners.
[102] Slater, pp. 126-7.
[103] _Ibid._, p. 128.
[104] _The Poor Man’s Best Friend, or Land to cultivate for his
own Benefit._ Letter to the Marquis of Salisbury, by the Rev. S.
Demainbray, B.D., 1831.
[105] P. 126.
[106] See for this subject _Cambridge Modern History_, vol. viii. chap.
24, and P. Sagnac, _La Législation Civile de la Révolution Française_.
[107] Vol. i. p. 119 ff.
[108] Jackson’s _Oxford Journal_, September 11, 1830, said that a
single cottager sometimes cleared as much as £20 a year by geese.
[109] _Oxford University and City Herald_, September 25, 1830.
[110] _House of Commons Journal_, February 17, 1815.
[111] Alexander Croke (1758-1842), knighted in 1816, was from 1801-1815
judge in the Vice-Admiralty Court, Nova Scotia. As a lawyer, he could
defend his own interests.
[112] Dunkin’s _Oxfordshire_, vol. i. pp. 122-3.
[113] _Ibid._, p. 123.
[114] Jackson’s _Oxford Journal_, September 18, 1830.
[115] Vol. i. p. 124.
[116] Jackson’s _Oxford Journal_, September 11, 1830.
[117] _Ibid._
[118] _Ibid._, September 18.
[119] See Jackson’s _Oxford Journal_, and _Oxford University and City
Herald_, for September 11, 1830, and also _Annual Register_, 1830,
Chron., p. 142, and Home Office Papers, for what follows.
[120] _Oxford University and City Herald_, September 11, 1830.
[121] _Ibid._
[122] Jackson’s _Oxford Journal_, March 5, 1831.