,596 Agricultural Labour Early Last Century. [Oct., 



it. Karl Marx, a bitter critic of the England of those times* 

 admitted that there was one respect in which England set a 

 good example : she was continually holding inquiries and pub - 

 lishing facts about her social problems. At this time there were 

 frequent investigations into the Poor Laws and the Game Laws, 

 and Parliamentary committees were constantly trying to find 

 out what was the matter. The truth was that under the influence 

 of a great economic stimulus and a great national danger Parlia- 

 ment had carried out a revolution which had had beneficent 

 consequences in increasing the food resources of the country at 

 a time when that increase was urgently needed, and it was quite 

 helpless in the face of these unexpected results. This sudden 

 and perplexing social problem bewildered most people. In the 

 back of their minds they believed it insoluble. 



Kemedies were suggested by men of experience and knowledge. 

 Such were Eden, Arthur Young, Cobbett. and Lord Suffield, all 

 of whom at different times proposed schemes for providing 

 labourers with cottages and allotments. All these schemes 

 assumed, in opposition to the general notion of the tim.e, that 

 independence was not a bad but a good influence in a man's 

 life : acting as a spur to his industry and thrift. Arthur Young 

 proposed that twenty millions should be spent in endowing half 

 a million families with cottages and allotments : the fee simple 

 to be vested in the parish, the cottage and land to revert to the 

 parish if the father or his family became chargeable to the rates. 

 The proposal was made at a time when a General Bill for facili- 

 tating and cheapening enclosure was before Parliament. Young 

 made the proposal because in his travels about the country he 

 had been appalled by the general avalanche of pauperism under 

 which the villages were sinking, and he noticed that wherever 

 there w^ere cottagers who had kept together a little property or 

 retained their rights of pasture they had escaped the common 

 fate. His pamphlet is a moving document, showing how painful 

 an impression the scenes he had witnessed had made on his mind. 

 He was supported by Sir John Sinclair, the first President 

 of the old Board of Agriculture, but the Board was now in other 

 hands and though Young was Secretary the publication was 

 private and not official. It was Young's hope that the General 

 Enclosure Bill, then before Parliament, would be amended in 

 order to make provision for cottagers in future enclosures, but 

 his hope was disappointed. Cobbett sketched a similar plan 

 in a letter to William Windham, published in his Political 

 Pegister; and Lord Suffield, well known for his noble exertions 

 as a Prison Eeformer, tried in vain to get Ijord Grey's Govern- 



