ON THE COST OF CARRIAGE. 653 



ceiling; a small parlour, entered at the corner which was 

 most remote from the door; with offices, and two or three 

 rooms above. In front is the quadrangular farm-yard, with 

 barn and byres round the greater part of its sides. 



It is only a short time since that a newspaper article 

 charged the wisest and most prudent man which this country, 

 perhaps this nation, has ever produced, when he commented on 

 the grievous change which we witness now, with a desire of 

 taking the lands of the rich for distribution among the poor. 

 It might have been retorted that for the last 300 years, still 

 more fully for the last fifty, the lands of the poor have been 

 divided among the rich a . Despite the ingenuity of the 

 Platonic Socrates, legislation is, and has been, directed to 

 the aggrandizement of the strongest. 



My reader will, I hope, if he has had the patience to endure 

 this digression, see that there were, notwithstanding the general 

 completeness of this parish or manorial system and its prac- 

 tical independence, great reasons for a free communication 

 between other parishes by means of markets and fairs. It will 

 be remembered that the regular process of distribution by 

 means of retail shops, with which we are so familiar, had in 

 those days no existence, except perhaps in the greater towns. 

 It was only on special occasions, that is to say, at fairs or 

 markets, that any want could be supplied. It was by these 

 means only that surplus produce could be disposed of. All 

 were producers, none were intermediaries to the producer and 

 consumer, except perhaps the keeper of the village alehouse. 



Again, to buy it was necessary to sell. In the village every 

 one was engaged in the same or nearly the same occupation. 

 The exchange of commodities could be effected only in some 

 common market, in which the agent for the townsfolk pur- 



* The best evidence of the singular diminution in the number of freeholders in the 

 proper sense of the term, that is yeomen will be found in the numerous poll-books of 

 the eighteenth century, contained in the Gough Collection of the Bodleian Library. The 

 power of strict settlement and the enclosure of commons have been the machinery by 

 which this change has been effected. 



