450 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL chap. 



robbery of the people. Then in later times, and down to 

 the present century, we have that barefaced robbery by 

 form of law, the enclosure of the commons, leading, perhaps 

 more than anything else, to the misery and destruction of 

 the rural population. Much of this enclosure was made 

 by means of false pretences. The general Enclosure Acts 

 declare that the purpose of enclosure is to facilitate 

 ' the productive employment of labour ' in the improve- 

 ment of the land. Yet hundreds of thousands of acres in 

 all parts of the country, especially in Surrey, Hampshire, 

 Dorsetshire, and other southern counties, were simply 

 taken from the people and divided among the surrounding 

 landlords, and then only used for sport, not a single pound 

 being spent in cultivating it. Now, however, during 

 the last twenty years, much of this land is being sold 

 for building at. high building prices, a purpose never 

 contemplated when the Enclosure Acts were obtained. 

 During the last two centuries more than seven millions 

 of acres have been thus taken from the poor by men who 

 were already rich, and the more land they already pos- 

 sessed the larger share of the commons was allotted to 

 them. Even a Royal Commission, in 1869, declared that 

 these enclosures were often made " without any com- 

 pensation to the smaller commoners, deprived agricultural 

 labourers of ancient rights over the waste, and disabled 

 the occupants of new cottages from acquiring new 

 rights." 



Now, in this long series of acts of plunder of the 

 people's land, we have every circumstance tending to 

 aggravate the crime. It was robbery of the poor by the 

 rich. It was robbery of the weak and helpless by the 

 strong. And it had that worst feature which distin- 

 guishes robbery from mere confiscation — the jDlunder was 

 divided among the individual robbers. Yet, again, it was 

 a form of robbery specially forbidden by the religion of 

 the robbers, a religion for which they professed the 

 deepest reverence, and of which they considered them- 

 selves the special defenders. They read in wliat they 

 call the Word of God, " Woe unto them that join house to 

 house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, that 



