nistory of the Tlnglish handled Interest. 
741 
of the idea of agricultural co-operation. The moral I would 
especially point is this : periodic distresses in agriculture run 
throughout the centuries. 
The fascination of the whole subject has led me to trespass 
at greater length than I had originally intended. Reader, if I 
have been fortunate enough in any degree to reawaken or to 
excite your interest, let me refer you for full satisfaction to Mr. 
Garnier’s very useful and timely book. I beg him in his future 
undertaking to see that full justice is done to the important 
subject of “ The Making of the Land,” the agricultural conquest 
over the English wilderness. Mr. Gamier well says, “ The ex- 
penditure of individual capital has long rendered the past 
irrevocable ” — land, for example, not annually worth one shilling 
an acre converted by the expenditure of capital into farms 
worth for that quantity two pounds a year ; he may tell of the 
Statute ' Book teeming with Enclosure Acts. We have it on 
the high authority of Lord Thriug. 
“ Some 4,000 Acts for the enclosure and regulation of commons crowd 
the Statute Book. The unemployed are always with us, and one remedy of 
our forefathers to relieve their distress was to enclose commons, and thus 
afford work to the labourer. We have now returned to the wisdom of our 
ancestors in this respect, and accept as good philosophy and good law the 
adage — 
“ ‘ A sin it is in man or woman 
To steal a goose from off a common. 
But he doth sin without excuse 
AVho steals the common from the goose.’ ” 
An enviable, a delightful vista now opens out before Mr. 
Gamier — pen and ink sketches of the agricultural giants of the 
eighteenth century : how he may revel in the charming literature 
of that day and cull gems of literaiy illustration, for example, 
amongst a thousand others, from Sir Roger de Coverley, from 
the Humphrey Clinker of my kinsman Smollett, from Arthur 
Young’s absolute photographs, as he travelled about breaking 
down barriers by teaching respectively one district the best 
practice of another. Farmer George — Ralph Robinson — the 
King must not be forgotten, et hoc genus omne. The mass of 
all-important material is absolutely bewildering ; my own 
danger would be, to use a French phrase, 1 should “ grow too big 
for my boots ! ” The historian of the present time and not very 
remote past may well be stunned by the whirl of the vast 
machinery that weaves the web of history. 
‘ “ Read the Statute Book ; it is the best history of England.” Tliis was said 
to me by an old Justice when as a young man I took my seat on the bench. 
Mr. Froude says of the Statute Book, therein is buried the true history of the 
English nation. 
