54 LAND REFORM 



common itself was viewed in a different light. It was 

 a larger and more respectable transaction, carried out 

 under class-made law, or more often by the strong 

 arm under the law of "might is right," so potent in 

 former times. Donald Ben Lean, in " Waverley," 

 was regarded, not as a purloiner of cattle, but as a 

 "gentleman drover," for the reason that "he never 

 lifted less than a drove in his life." 



Vast areas of land were cleared of men to make 

 room for sheep. Commoners found their few acres 

 of arable land almost useless when deprived of that 

 common pasture for their cattle, which had always 

 belonged to them. Rights, customs, and privileges 

 which had been enjoyed by different classes of 

 cultivators from time immemorial, were extinguished 

 by force or legal technicalities, while large numbers 

 of freeholders and copyholders were, by the same 

 means, either evicted or reduced to the position of 

 tenants, with ever-increasing rents. These dispos- 

 sessed classes were driven by want and despair to 

 swell the ranks of beggars, vagabonds, and robbers, 

 whose existence so puzzled successive governments, 

 and for whose suppression the most cruel and wicked 

 laws were enacted in vain. 



One of the most brilliant of modern historians thus 

 vividly describes the situation : — 



" Increase of rent ended, with such tenants, in the 

 relinquishment of their holdings ; but the bitterness of 

 the ejections which the new system of cultivation 

 necessitated, was increased by the iniquitous means 

 that were often employed to bring them about. The 

 farmers, if we believe More in 15 15, were 'got rid 

 of either by fraud or force, or tired out with repeated 

 wrongs into parting with their property. In this way 



