92 LAND REFORM 



was an economic loss as far as the community was 

 concerned. Among the competent judges who were 

 of this opinion William Cobbett, a keen observer, 

 writes : — 



"In all the really agricultural villages and parts of 

 the kingdom there is a shocking decay, a great dilapi- 

 dation and constant pulling down or falling of houses. 

 . . . The cows, pigs, geese, poultry, gardens, bees, 

 fuel, that arise from those wastes far exceed, even in 

 the capacity for sustaining people, similar breadths of 

 ground distributed into these large farms in the poor 

 parts of Northumberland. I have seen not less than 

 ten thousand geese in one tract of common in about 

 six miles in Surrey."^ He expresses his belief that 

 these geese alone, " raised entirely by care and by 

 the common," are worth more than the profit from 

 the inclosed lands referred to. 



Had our statesmen in former times, like statesmen 

 in other countries, dealt with this vital question of the 

 land by wise legislation in the interests of the nation, 

 instead of allowing it (often against their better judg- 

 ment) to be settled by class-made law, greater and 

 more lasting economic advantages would have been 

 secured and the ruin of our rural population avoided. 



With the millions of acres of common and waste 

 land to be dealt with, the just and even excessive 

 claims of the landlord class might have been satisfied, 

 and at the same time the yeomen and peasant-pro- 

 prietors retained permanently in self-contained hold- 

 incTs. No doubt there was a difficulty with the small 

 commoners. The open field system of cultivation was 

 certainly a wasteful one. It was almost impossible to 

 apply new and improved methods of husbandry to 

 long tracts of arable land separated by strips of grass, 



» "Cobbett's Rural Rides," 1 821 to 1832. 



