30 PROBLEMS OF VILLAGE LIFE 



decisions of the Enclosure Commissioners, 

 who were in practice selected by the Petitioner. 

 Even Young, an ardent advocate of enclosures, 

 declares that the details were generally fixed 

 by the landowners beforehand. " The small 

 proprietor has little or no weight in regulating 

 the clauses of the Act. The property of the 

 proprietors, especially the poor ones, is entirely 

 at the mercy of the Commissioners, for they 

 are vested with a despotic power known in 

 no other branch of business in this free 

 country." 



The tendency to add field to field and to 

 increase the number of the large farms at the 

 cost of the small ones, has continued through 

 successive generations to the present day, 

 and will be noticed later on as one of the causes 

 which prompted the marked hostility of many 

 landowners and farmers towards the policy 

 of Small Holdings. With the disappearance 

 of many thousands of small farms there 

 disappeared also a class of men who had 

 proved a mighty asset to the national safety 

 and prosperity the yeomanry of England, 

 the men who had destroyed the knights of 

 France in the days of Crecy and Agincourt. 

 The disappearance of this highly valuable 

 class of citizen has always aroused the amaze- 

 ment of foreign students of the English land 



