28 PROBLEMS OF VILLAGE LIFE 



the Small Landowner, declares that from the 

 seventeenth century onwards " the Houses 

 of Parliament, the central Executive, and 

 the local bodies of administration all 

 worked together towards a common end the 

 advancement of the interests of a great com- 

 mercial and landowning aristocracy, . 4 i 

 contemptuous of any opposition . . . and 

 disregardful of any distress their conduct 

 might cause." 



The great campaign of pillage was carefully 

 prepared by the very classes whose interests 

 were served the landlords who wanted more 

 land and rent, the clergy who expected more 

 tithes, the farmers who required more grazing 

 land and disliked the independence of the 

 smallholder and squatter. It was discovered 

 that the peasant farmers were idle, vicious, 

 and thoroughly undesirable : and religious 

 cant was employed to prove that the " bounties 

 of Nature ought to be revealed by putting 

 God's land to its best use." *' The use of 

 common land by labourers," says the " Report 

 on Shropshire," 1794, " operates on the mind 

 as a sort of independence " : when the 

 commons are enclosed, " the labourers will 

 work every day in the year, their children will 

 be put out to labour early . . . and that 

 subordination of the lower orders of Society, 



