

74 ENCLOSURES III 



Granted, however, that this change was facilitated by 

 the enclosures, wehave yet to convince ourselves that the 

 permanent disappearance of the small owner was not due 

 to deeper causes,, of which enclosing' was l)ut a symptom. 

 Other countries, like France and Germany, and the Channel 

 Islands, have, in a great measure, abandoned the open-field 

 system ; yet the small proprietor survives. This question 

 will be more fully discussed in a later lecture, but the fact 

 should be kept in mind. Some will tell us that the final 

 explanation of the divergence between England and some 

 parts of the continent is to be looked for in the social, 

 political, and economical peculiarities of England, which 

 had already appeared and were to attain greater momentum 

 in the future, and which meant for the peasant holder 

 'economic death'. 1 f lt was the incapacity of the great 

 mass of the people to conform to conditions rapidly and 

 fundamentally changing that made this time of transition 

 so harcl for the lower classes.' 2 But that those conditions 

 should change was inevitable, if England was to take her 

 new position in the world. 



1 Savine, Quarterly Journal of Economics, xix. 



2 Cheyne, Social Changes, p. 21. 



