76 LAND REFORM 



very ignorant who will not allow that coaxing, bribing, 

 and threatening, together with many other acts which 

 superiors make use of, will very often induce the in- 

 feriors to give their consent to things which they are 

 convinced will be to their future disadvantage."^ 



In 1813 a General Inclosure Bill was promoted by 

 the territorial party which, however, did not pass. Its 

 object was to do away with the heavy Parliamen- 

 tary expenses connected with private bills. William 

 Cobbett was applied to for his support to the measure, 

 but, though he would have been a great gainer by the 

 inclosure of commons in his neighbourhood, he was 

 strongly opposed to the Bill. He wrote : — 



" Those who are so eager for new inclosure seem to 

 argue as if the waste land in its present state produced 

 nothing at all. But is this the fact ? Can any one 

 point out a single inch of it which does not produce 

 something and the produce of which is made use of.-* 

 It goes to the feeding of sheep, of cows, of cattle of 

 all descriptions, and, what is of great consequence in 

 my view of the matter, it helps to rear, in health and 

 vigour, numerous families of the children of labourers, 

 which children, were it not for these wastes, must be 

 crammed into the stinking suburbs of towns amidst 

 filth of all sorts, and congregating together in the 

 practice of every species of idleness and vice. A 

 family reared by the side of a common or forest is 

 clearly distinguishable from a family bred on the 

 pestiferous stench of the dark alley of a town." He 

 goes on to say that with regard to the waste in his 

 neighbourhood (Botley), he v/ould be entitled, in case 

 of a general inclosure, to sixty or a hundred acres of 

 good land, yet he "would never consent to the inclo- 



' " Observations on the Enclosures of Waste Lands." By a Society 

 of Fanners, 1785, 



