COW-KEEPING ON COMMONS 305 



the hands of the family, which are found abroad, in the countries 

 mentioned. They are very poor, respecting money, but very happy 

 respecting their mode of existence. Contrivance, mutual assist- 

 ance, by barter and hire, enable them to manage these little farms 

 though they break all the rules of rural proportion." 



On these lines, he urged in 1800 x that every scrap of waste and 

 neglected land should be converted into possessions for the poor, 

 and that all labourers should be assigned gardens and grass-land 

 for the keep of a cow. In 1801 2 he proposed that labourers should 

 be allowed to absorb for themselves the small commons which 

 were situated in the centre of enclosed districts, and that all Acts 

 of Parliament for the reclamation of wastes should attach enough 

 land to every cottage to provide summer and winter keep for a 

 cow, the land to be inalienable and vested in the parish. He 

 based these recommendations on his own personal observations of 

 the effect of the enclosure of commons. " Many kept cows that 

 have not since " is his frequent summary of results. Out of 37 

 parishes, he found only 12 in which the poor had not suffered. 3 

 " By nineteen Enclosure Acts out of twenty, the poor are injured, 

 in some grossly injured. . . . The poor in these parishes may 

 say, and with truth, Parliament may be tender of property ; all I 

 know is I had a cow, and an Act of Parliament has taken it from 

 me." 4 The Board of Agriculture printed evidence to the same 

 effect. 6 Out of 68 Enclosure Acts, 53 had injured the poor, who had 

 lost their cows, and could no longer buy milk for their families. 

 The same point is frequently noticed by the Reporters. Nathaniel 

 Kent, for example, dwells upon it in his Report on Norfolk, and 

 urges " all great farmers ... to provide comfortable cottages for 

 two or three of their most industrious labourers, and to lay two or 

 three acres of grass land to each to enable such labourer to keep 

 a cow and a pig." 6 Yet even when the opportunity to keep a 

 cow occurred, it was not invariably used. " Cottagers," says Kent, 

 " who live at the sides of the common generally neglect the advantage 

 they have before them. There is not, perhaps, one out of six, 



1 Question of Scarcity plainly stated (1800). 



* Inquiry into the Propriety of applying Wastes to the better Maintenance 

 and Support of the Poor (1801). 



3 Ibid, p 19. Ibid. p. 42. 



5 General Report on Enclosures, 1808, pp. 150-2. 



6 Kent's Norfolk, p. 172. 



U 



