MORAL DAMAGE FROM LOSS OF COMMONS 307 



their weekly wages. They gave the man who enjoyed rights of 

 common, and lived near enough to use them, an interest in the 

 land and the hope of acquiring a larger interest. They encouraged 

 his tlnrift and fostered his independence. Men who had grazing 

 rights hoarded their money to buy a cow. They enabled wage- 

 earners to keep hve-stock, which was somethmg of their own. 

 They gave them fuel, instead of driving them to the baker for 

 every sort of cooking. They formed the lowest rung in the social 

 ladder, by which the successful commoner might hope to cUmb to 

 the occupation of a holding suited to his capital. Now the com- 

 mons were gone, and the farms which replaced them were too 

 large to be attainable. Contemporary Avriters who comment on 

 the increasing degradation of the labouring classes too often treat 

 as its causes changes which were really its consequences. They 

 note the increase of drunkenness, but forget that the occupation 

 of the labourer's idle moments was gone ; they attack the mis- 

 chievous practice of giving children tea, but forget that milk was 

 no longer procurable ; they condemn the rising generation as 

 incapable for farm labour, but forget that the parents no longer 

 occupied land on which their children could learn to work ; they 

 deplore the helplessness of the modern wives of cottagers who had 

 become dependent on the village baker, but forget that they were 

 now obHged to buy flour, and had lost their free fuel ; they denounce 

 their improvident marriages, but forget that the motive of thrift 

 was removed. The results were the hopelessness, the indifference, 

 and the moral deterioration of the landless labourer. " Go," says 

 Arthur Young, " to an ale-house kitchen of an old enclosed country, 

 and there you will see the origin of poverty and the poor-rates. 

 For whom are they to be sober ? For whom are they to save ? 

 (such are their questions). For the parish ? If I am diligent, 

 shall I have leave to build a cottage ? If I am sober, shall I have 

 land for a cow ? If I am frugal, shall I have half an acre of 

 potatoes ? You offer no motives ; you have nothing but a parish 

 officer and a workhouse. Bring me another pot." ^ The same 

 point is urged, with less vivacity and picturesqueness of statement, 

 by the best writers of the day, especially by Howlett and Davies. 



The displacement of numbers of cottagers, commoners, and open- 

 field farmers came at a difficult crisis. Hitherto rural labourers 

 in many parts of the country had regarded day work for wages 



^ Annals of Agriculture, vol. xxxvi. p. 608. On Wastes (1801), pp. 12, 13. 



