V AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES 103 



business in this free country/ * Even Lord Thurlow, under 

 one of those pious impulses to which we know he was some- 

 times subject, denounced the injustice inflicted on small 

 proprietors. 2 



y. The fate of the cottagers was much worse. These, it 

 should be remembered, had no legal rights on the waste 3 or 

 on the common field. The advocates for enclosure argued 

 that they were mere squatters, with no rights at all, and 

 tried, moreover, to prove that, not only would the parish 

 itself gain by their removal, but that they themselves would 

 benefit materially, because the use of the waste was of little 

 advantage to them, and morally, because they would give 

 up idleness and take to labour, the demand for which would 

 be more continuous because of enclosure. 4 The first state- 

 ment forgets that little is better than nothing ; the second 

 might be true until the hedging, consequent on enclosure, 

 was finished ; but that done, the question of employment 

 would depend on whether arable cultivation or pasture 

 followed. X In any case, they generally lost their privilege 

 of turning out a donkey, a few sheep, or some poultry on 

 the common. 5 



1 A. Young, Six Months' Tour through North of England, 1771, 

 i. 222 ; Annals, xxxvi, pp. 529, 566 ; cf. also Board of Agriculture 

 General Report on Enclosures, 1808. 



2 Parl. Hiat., xxii. 59. 



3 The object of Act of Settlement of 1662 had been to restrain 

 people from going from parish to parish and ' settling where there 

 is the largest common or waste to build cottages and the most woods 

 for them to destroy, and when they have consumed it then to another 

 parish.' In some parts of Wales and England there was an idea that 

 if a squatter could build a cottage in one night he could not be 

 removed. But a cottage did not carry with it any right to turn 

 out cattle unless it had land attached. Report 1844, Qs. 3255, 3260, 

 4898, 4900. 



4 Report on Enclosures, 1844, Qs. 175, 311, 1278, 1414, 1643, 1662, 

 1841-7, 3084, 4292, 6064, &c. 



* There are some instances to the contrary ; Scruton, p. 150 ; 

 Victoria County Hist. : Lincolnshire, p. 342. 





