32 PROBLEMS OF VILLAGE LIFE 



de Laveleye, says, " The feudal owners are 

 allowed to-day to act as freely as in the time 

 when William the Conqueror destroyed thirty- 

 six villages to make the New Forest. Two 

 millions of acres, comprising land of the 

 greatest fertility, are changed into a desert. 

 The natural pasture of Glen Tilt was the 

 richest in Perth, the deer forest of Ben Avieden 

 fed 15,000 sheep, and we have here only the 

 thirtieth part of the territory sacrificed or 

 rendered so unproductive that it might as 

 well have been swallowed up by the sea." 



This process of absorption has been stereo- 

 typed in more recent days by the enormously 

 enhanced value of shooting and fishing rights 

 in the Highlands, and the eagerness of wealthy 

 sportsmen, some of them of foreign nationality, 

 to secure at almost any cost the cool solitudes 

 of northern Scotland for the preservation on 

 an immense scale of grouse and deer. 



As Hasbach has pointed out, two great 

 movements in English history, the Reforma- 

 tion and the struggle for the supremacy of 

 Parliament, proved, by a sad paradox, full of 

 mischief for the villagers of our country. The 

 suppression of monasteries and the seizure 

 of monastic estates, one-fifth of the total 

 area of the cultivated land, deprived the poor 

 of the succour which had hitherto supported 



