The Emancipation of Labour. 5 1 1 



would admit.^ Parliament took up the subject in 1819, and 

 passed an Act empowering the parochial authorities " to pur- 

 chase or take on lease any suitable portion of land, and to let 

 such portion of land to any poor and industrious inhabitant of 

 the parish, to be occupied and cultivated on his own account." 

 The Poor Law Commissioners in 1834, and Mr, Cowper in 

 1836, again drew public attention to the subject. Nothing 

 much, however, seems to have come of all this. The General 

 Enclosure Act of 1845 wrested from the labouring poor some 

 320,855 acres of unstinted common-rights, for which they 

 were to have been compensated under the allotment system. 

 The Royal Commission in 1868, however, brought to light that 

 only 2,119 acres out of all this great area then enclosed, had 

 been allotted to the cottager. The following rhyme aptly 

 describes while it also condemns the results of our legislation 

 at this particular time : — 



" A sin it is in man or woman, 

 To steal a goose from off a common; 

 But he doth sin without excuse, 

 Who steals the common from the goose." 



Yet the spoliation of the poor man was never more repug- 

 nant to the mind of the English landlord than during this 

 period of history. Without the spur of recent legislation, 

 squires were replacing the hovel by those picturesque and 

 sanitary buildings which Mrs. Hemans has eulogised in grace- 

 ful verse. No one would be prepared to contest an assertion 

 once made by the present Lord Salisbury, that cottage build- 

 ing could not be regarded as a commercial investment, and 

 that one-third of the cost represented the charity of the land- 

 lord. 



The allotment system, however, has by no means proved a 

 perfect substitute for the labourers' lost common rights, for, as 

 we have shown in an earlier chaf)ter, the farmer's man is not 

 in a position to cultivate his field-garden just after he has per- 

 formed a fair day's work for his employer. Far preferable is 

 the old economy still practised here and there in the north, 



' The Land and the Labourers. C. W. Stubbs, 1884. 



