88 LAND REFORM 



were the reasons given before the Court at Merton, 

 when the barons assembled passed the statute of that 

 name in their own favour. The same reasons were 

 urged in succeeding reigns, reasons which, as we have 

 seen, were not accepted by the monarchs of the time ; 

 and the same pleas were urged in support of every 

 Inclosi^re Act passed by Parliament. 



Political economists and other writers of the day 

 supported this view. They rarely allude to the 

 wrongs inflicted on the mass of cultivators by the 

 system of inclosures as it was carried out. If they 

 do allude to these wrongs it is simply to treat them 

 as " inevitable," as results " inseparable from improved 

 methods of agriculture." Lord Macaulay, in his 

 History, passes lightly over this part of the question. 

 "It must be admitted," he says, "that the progress 

 of civilization " has diminished the comforts of certain 

 classes of the rural population, and after referring to 

 the advantages which the peasant had received in 

 food, fuel, etc., he dismisses the subject by saying 

 that " the progress of agriculture and the increase of 

 the population necessarily deprived him of these 

 privileges." But they were not privileges ; they were 

 rights ; and rights of, what was then, the mass of the 

 population, which were sacrificed to what is called 

 "civilization." Moreover, a policy, however bene- 

 ficial in itself, becomes a vicious one, and produces 

 disastrous results if unjust and selfish methods of 

 carrying it out are employed. 



Setting aside, for the moment, the economic side of 

 the question, and looking at it from the point of view 

 of the labourer, the peasant, the yeoman, and the 

 community, several answers can be given to the argu- 

 ments referred to. To hold that a class of men — 



