THE ENGLISH LAND SYSTEM 93 



or balks, and belonging to different owners. But by 

 an adjustment of claims these difficulties might have 

 been readily overcome if the national good had been 

 the principle of action. 



This view is well expressed by one of the wisest 

 of our old English writers — one who detested all 

 inclosures that led to depopulation, but was in favour 

 of them when carried out on just lines. *' Inclosures," 

 he writes, "may be made without depopulating, . . . 

 but depopulation has cast a slander on inclosures 

 because often done with it people suspect it can not 

 be done without it. Inclosure made without depopula- 

 tion is injurious to none. I mean if proportional 

 allotments be made to the poor for their commonage 

 and free and leaseholders have a considerable share 

 with the lord of the manor. Inclosure without de- 

 populating is beneficial to private persons. Then 

 have they most power and comfort to improve their 

 own parts, and for the time and manner these may 

 mould it to their own conveniency. The monarch 

 of one acre will make more profit thereof than he 

 that has his share in forty in commons. . . . Inclosure 

 with depopulation is a canker to the commonwealth. 

 It needs no proof; woful experience shows how it 

 unhouses thousands of people, till desperate need 

 thrusts them on the gallows." He goes on to further 

 describe the effect of the action of the "desolatino- 

 and depopulating owners."^ 



^ Fuller's "The Holy State and the Profane State," 1642; see also 

 "The Good Yeoman" and other essays. Thomas Fuller was a pre- 

 bendary of Salisbury, and also for a time rector of a village in Dorset, so 

 that he had opportunities of seeing the evils he spoke of, and like so many 

 clergymen in those times did not shrink from denouncing the policy that 

 caused them. The remarkable sentence '* The monarch of one acre," etc., 

 is a striking illustration of the power of ownership in the cultivation of 

 the soil. 



