[INTRODUCTION.]
THE ENGLISH PEASANTRY AND THE ENCLOSURE OF COMMON FIELDS.
The enclosure of common fields, and the passing away of the English Village Community to make room for the agricultural organisation prevailing to-day, is a subject not merely of historical interest, but one which touches very closely some of the most vital national problems of the twentieth century.
During the past five generations mechanical, industrial, and commercial progress, with the consequent creation of great towns and cities, has so occupied the national activities, and has made us to such an extent a nation of town-dwellers, that there has been a tendency to overlook rural life and rural industries. But in recent years social reformers have come to see that the solution of many of the problems of the town is to be found in the country, and increasing attention is being paid to the causes of the rural exodus and the best means by which it can be arrested. No industry can be in a healthy condition which does not provide an opportunity for the small man to improve his position; and consequently such questions as the provision of allotments and small holdings, agricultural co-operation, the preservation of the independence of spirit of the agricultural labourer, and the securing for him the prospect of a continually advancing career on the land are recognised as matters of urgent national importance.
In this book Dr. Slater shows that the movement for the enclosure of arable open and common fields has been a movement for the sweeping away of small holdings and small properties; that the “Village Community” which any Enclosure Act of this character abolished was essentially an organisation for agricultural co-operation. He shows that at least in certain parts of the country even in comparatively recent times enclosure has produced rural depopulation, and has converted the villager from “a peasant with a mediæval status to an agricultural labourer entirely dependent on a weekly wage.” He further makes us doubt whether these little village revolutions, while they temporarily stimulated agricultural progress by facilitating improved stock-breeding and the economy of labour, did not also to a certain extent destroy the opportunities of future progress by separating farmer from labourer by a gulf difficult to cross, and thus cutting off the supply of new recruits to the farming class.
At the same time, whatever reasons there may be for regretting the enclosure of our Common Fields, and for wishing that the interests of the humbler tillers of the soil had been more sedulously guarded on enclosure, in the main the process was inevitable. Common field Agriculture was a survival of customs and institutions which had grown up when each village lived its life to a great extent in isolation. It was necessary that the villager should almost forget that he was a Little Pedlingtonian to realise that he was an Englishman. Village patriotism had to die down temporarily to make way for national patriotism; and when the spirit died out of the Village Community its form could not be preserved.