CHAPTER IX 



THE LAST LABOURERS ' REVOLT 



Views of some Authorities. 



As a result of the wholesale enclosing of land, there 

 existed during the latter part of the eighteenth and the 

 earlier years of the nineteenth centuries a mass of poverty- 

 stricken labourers. It will be an advantage at this stage 

 to consider the opinions of some of the great writers upon 

 the position thus created. 



Mr. and Mrs. Hammond, the authors of " The Village 

 Labourer," thus sum up the effect of enclosures upon the 

 position of the peasant : " It was not one generation alone 

 that was struck down by the blow. For the commons 

 were the patrimony of the poor. The commoner's child, 

 however needy, was born with a spoon in his mouth. He 

 came into a world in. which he had a share and a place. 

 The civilization which was now submerged had spelt a 

 sort of independence for the obscure lineage of the village. 

 It had represented, too, the importance of the interest 

 of the community in its soil, and in this aspect also the 

 robbery of the present was less important than the robbery 

 of the future. For one act of confiscation blotted out a 

 principle of permanent value to the State. . . . The en- 

 closures created a new organization of classes. The peasant 

 with rights and a status, with a share in the fortunes and 

 government of his village, standing in rags, but standing 

 on his feet, makes way for the labourer with no corporate 

 rights to defend, no corporate power to invoke, no property 

 to cherish, no ambition to pursue, bent beneath the fear 

 of his masters and the weight of a future without hope. 

 No class in the world has so beaten and crouching a history." 



Mr. Prothero writes : " Rural society was convulsed, and 

 its general conditions revolutionized. The divorce of a 

 peasantry from the soil, and the extinction of commoners, 

 open-field farmers, and eventually of small freeholders 

 were the heavy price which the nation ultimately paid 

 for the supply of bread and meat to its manufacturing 



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