In this district, consisting of open downs, stretching for miles along the summits and higher slopes of the chalk hills; intersected by winding rivers bordered by flat alluvial land of naturally rich pasture, but converted by irrigation into the famous Wiltshire water meadows, the long lower slopes of the hills, as it were, decreed by nature to be noble corn fields, cultivation had to be on a large scale; the unit of cultivation had to be a piece of land of reasonable width, stretching from the river to the summit of the downs. Hence small farms could not exist without some degree of organised mutual help. When that organisation, which in this district was furnished by the common field system, was terminated by Enclosure Acts, consolidation of farms became necessary.
Nowhere else are these conditions present in quite so fully developed a degree as in Wiltshire, which contains the central hub from which radiate the three great belts of chalk down, the South Downs, the North Downs, and the range containing the Chilterns, the chalk hills of Hertfordshire, the Gog-Magogs of Cambridgeshire, and their continuation into Norfolk. But the most essential feature of Wiltshire agriculture, viz., the combination of sheep down and arable field, may be said to be characteristic of all this country. This is the country from which in the sixteenth century came the great indignant outcry against enclosure, which in More’s “Utopia” enters into the classic literature of our country. When it is remembered that the economic motive of enclosure then was the high price of wool, that private individuals are stated to have owned flocks of ten thousand, twenty thousand, and even of twenty-four thousand sheep[62], it is easy to conceive of whole parishes being converted into great sheep runs.
- [62] Preamble to 25 Henry VIII. c. 13.
CHAPTER XI.
ENCLOSURE AND THE POOR.
“The Poor at Enclosure do Grutch
Because of abuses that fall.”
Tusser, “Champion and Several.”
During the nineteenth century the controversy with regard to enclosure did not turn upon the question whether it did or did not injure the mass of the rural poor of the locality, in their capacity of agricultural labourers, by depriving them of employment; but whether it injured them by depriving them without compensation of rights which they had enjoyed before enclosure, but which could not be legally established; and whether poor owners of common rights have received compensation: the question, in fact, whether the poor are justified in “Grutching at Enclosure,” because of real abuses in the method of carrying it out. On this question no distinction need be drawn between the two classes of Enclosure Acts.
I do not think that much complaint can be made with regard to the administration of the Enclosure Acts since 1876 by the Board of Agriculture. By the provision of adequate allotment grounds and recreation grounds compensation is made to those villagers who can claim no specific rights of common; and though no doubt many of the owners of single common rights are dissatisfied with the plots of land assigned to them, there seems to be no reason for doubting that the Commissioners appointed have endeavoured to deal with rich and poor with equal fairness. Further, a great deal of the work of the Board in its capacity of Enclosure Commissioners has been the regulation of commons; and to a certain degree they have become a body for preserving instead of destroying commons. They may even be described as the most potent force for the preservation of existing common-fields, simply by insisting on a certain method in the division and allotment, which may be too expensive.