INTRODUCTORY. 15 



which had rarely been realised in any past experience. Fortu- 

 nately the purpose of the acts was not attained, for during 

 the greater number of the remaining years of the century, 

 mainly owing to the development of agricultural skill, prices 

 remained low, while, as I have said, there was a considerable 

 and permanent rise of wages. The same Parliament also 

 enacted the law of parochial settlement and so tied the 

 labourer to the land, while it gave him no share in it, for it is 

 easy to see in what interests the law was enacted. My 

 readers will remember the indignant comments of Adam 

 Smith 1 on this law. 



I have latterly come to the conclusion that the Statute of 

 Frauds, salutary and necessary as it was in many of its details, 

 contained in its first clause a provision under which customary 

 tenants, who were not provided with documentary evidence of 

 their title, and who paid fee-farm rents for their holdings, 

 could be turned into tenants at a rack-rent at the pleasure of 

 the recipient of the fee-farm rent. I have long wondered 

 what the causes were which brought about so rapid an 

 extinction of the small freeholders, and I cannot see that this 

 clause had a prospective significance only. Of course many of 

 these freeholders were protected by deeds, but there must 

 have been many persons, who had from father to son 

 occupied land on small reserved rents, who came within the 

 contingencies of the law, and who had no written title to 

 show. 



It cannot I think be doubted that the shameful example 

 which the Court of Charles gave, where honesty among men 

 and honour among women were almost unknown and in- 

 variably scoffed at, was the source of that appalling corruption 



1 Wealth of Nations, Book I. Chap. x. ( To remove a man who has committed 

 no misdemeanour from the parish where he chooses to reside, is an evident 

 violation of natural liberty and justice. The common people of England, however, 

 so jealous of their liberty, but like the common people of most other countries 

 rightly understanding wherein it consists, have now for more than a century 

 together suffered themselves to be exposed to this oppression without a remedy,' 

 etc. 



