V AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES 101 



has shown that the small owner thrives best where, as in 

 the New Forest, a waste remains, 1 ancPa am convinced 

 that the peasant proprietor was more seriously injured by 

 the enclosure of the waste than of the common field. 



Then again, the expenses attending enclosure were heavy, 

 especially when it had to be effected by a Private Act of 

 Parliament-^ It cost much to get an Act passed. The 

 lawyers, the surveyors, and lastly the commissioners had to 

 be paid. 2 Sometimes, indeed, the lord of the manor or 

 some of the richer owners would bear the burden, obtaining 

 an extra allotment in return ; but in that case the allotment 

 of the poor man would probably be smaller. Finally, when 

 all was settled, the holding had to be hedged. To meet 

 the expenses money had often to be raised, and this meant 

 debt and, perhaps, a mortgage. Under these circumstances 

 the small man was ever tempted, and sometimes forced by 

 financial distress, to sell his holding to his richer neighbour, 

 or to some capitalist who was seeking for land, and whom 

 Cobbett calls contemptuously ' the fundholder '. Thus, the 

 indirect result of enclosure was consolidation. The poorer 

 sold and the rich bought. 3 



In answer to all this the promoters of enclosure pointed 

 to the fact that many enclosures were done by agreement, 

 and that even for a Private Act of Parliament substantial 

 agreement of a majority was necessary. The argument 

 .though specious is fallacious. 4 It was not the consent of 



40 before were now worth .100 ; cf. again, Qs. 1341, 1357, 1647, 1841, 

 3045 ; for The Isle of Axholme, the paradise of small proprietors, 

 Slater, p. 53. 



1 Cf. those villages in Germany where peasant proprietors have 

 rights on communal land and flourish : German Examples of Public 

 Ownership, Land Nationalisation Soc., Tract no. 91. 



2 Hasbach, p. 110, and authorities there quoted. 



3 General Report on Enclosures, 1888, p. 158. 



4 Cf. Mantoux, La Revolution industrielle, p. 157, and authorities 



