It is difficult, for example, to imagine that a committee in which the small men were represented would have sanctioned the amazing clause in the Ashelworth Act[39] which provided ‘that all fields or inclosures containing the Property of Two or more Persons within one fence, and also all inclosures containing the property of one Person only, if the same be held by or under different Tenures or Interests, shall be considered as commonable land and be divided and allotted accordingly.’ This clause, taken with the clause that follows, simply meant that some big landowner had his eye on some particular piece of enclosed property, which in the ordinary way would not have gone into the melting-pot at all. The arrangements of the Wakefield Act would hardly have survived the scrutiny of a committee on which the Duke of Leeds’ class was not paramount. Under that Act[40] the duke was to have full power to work mines and get minerals, and those proprietors whose premises suffered in consequence were to have reasonable satisfaction, not from the duke who was enriched by the disturbing cause, but from all the allottees, including presumably those whose property was damaged. Further, to save himself inconvenience, the duke could forbid allottees on Westgate Moor to build a house for sixty years. A different kind of House of Commons would have looked closely at the Act at Moreton Corbet which gave the lord of the manor all enclosures and encroachments more than twenty years old, and also at the not uncommon provision which exempted the tithe-owner from paying for his own fencing.
The Report of the 1825 Committee describes the system as ‘inviting all the interested parties in the House to take part in the business of the committee, which necessarily terminates in the prevalence of the strongest part, for they who have no interest of their own to serve will not be prevailed upon to take part in a struggle in which their unbiassed judgment can have no effect.’ The chairman of the committee was generally the member who had moved to introduce the Bill. The unreformed Parliament of landowners that passed the excellent Act of 1782, forbidding Members of Parliament to have an interest in Government contracts, never thought until the eve of the Reform Bill that there was anything remarkable in this habit of referring Enclosure Bills to the judgment of the very landowners who were to profit by them. And in 1825 it was not the Enclosure Bills, in which the rich took and the poor suffered, but the Railway Bills, in which rich men were pitted against rich men, that drew the attention of the House of Commons to the disadvantages and risks of this procedure.
The committee so composed sets to work on the Bill, and meanwhile, perhaps, some of the persons affected by the enclosure send petitions against it to the House of Commons. Difficulties of time and space would as a rule deter all but the rich dissentients, unless the enclosure was near London. These petitions are differently treated according to their origin. If they emanate from a lord of the manor, or from a tithe-owner, who for some reason or other is dissatisfied with the contemplated arrangements, they receive some attention. In such a case the petitioner probably has some friend in Parliament, and his point of view is understood. He can, if necessary, get this friend to attend the committee and introduce amendments. He is therefore a force to be reckoned with; the Bill is perhaps altered to suit him; the petition is at any rate referred to the committee. On the other hand, if the petition comes from cottagers or small proprietors, it is safe, as a rule, to neglect it.
The enclosure histories set out in the Appendix supply some good examples of this differential treatment. Lord Strafford sends a petition against the Bill for enclosing Wakefield with the result that he is allowed to appoint a commissioner, and also that his dispute with the Duke of Leeds is exempted from the jurisdiction of the Enclosure Commissioners. On the other hand, the unfortunate persons who petition against the monstrous provision that forbade them to erect any building for twenty, forty or sixty years, get no kind of redress. In the case of Croydon, James Trecothick, Esq., who is dissatisfied with the Bill, is strong enough to demand special consideration. Accordingly a special provision is made that the commissioners are obliged to sell Mr. Trecothick, by private contract, part of Addington Hills, if he so wishes. But when the various freeholders, copyholders, leaseholders and inhabitant householders of Croydon, who complain that the promoters of the Bill have named commissioners without consulting the persons interested, ask leave to nominate a third commissioner, only four members of the House of Commons support Lord William Russell’s proposal to consider this petition, and fifty-one vote the other way. Another example of the spirit in which Parliament received petitions from unimportant persons is furnished by the case of the enclosure of Holy Island. In 1791 (Feb. 23)[41] a petition was presented to Parliament for the enclosure of Holy Island, asking for the division of a stinted pasture, and the extinction of the rights of common or ‘eatage’ over certain infield lands. Leave was given, and the Bill was prepared and read a first time on 28th February. The same day Parliament received a petition from freeholders and stallingers, who ask to be heard by themselves or by counsel against the Bill. From Eden[42] we learn that there were 26 freeholders and 31 stallingers, and that the latter were in the strict sense of the term as much freeholders as the former. Whilst, however, a freeholder had the right to put 30 sheep, 4 black cattle and 3 horses on the stinted common, a stallinger had a right of common for one horse and one cow only. The House ordered that this petition should lie on the table till the second reading, and that the petitioners should then be heard. The second reading, which had been fixed for 2nd April, was deferred till 20th April, a change which probably put the petitioners to considerable expense. On 20th April the Bill was read a second time, and the House was informed that Counsel attended, and a motion was made that Counsel be now called in. But the motion was opposed, and on a division was defeated by 47 votes to 12. The Bill passed the House of Commons on 10th May, and received the Royal Assent on 9th June.[43] In this case the House of Commons broke faith with the petitioners, and refused the hearing it had promised. Such experience was not likely to encourage dissentients to waste their money on an appeal to Parliament against a Bill that was promoted by powerful politicians. It will be observed that at Armley and Ashelworth the petitioners did not think that it was worth the trouble and expense to be heard on Second Reading.
The Report of the Committee followed a stereotyped formula: ‘That the Standing Orders had been complied with: and that the Committee had examined the Allegations of the Bill and found the same to be true; and that the Parties concerned had given their Consent to the Bill, to the Satisfaction of the Committee, except....’
Now what did this mean? What consents were necessary to satisfy the committee? The Parliamentary Committee that reported on the cost of enclosures in 1800[44] said that there was no fixed rule, that in some cases the consent of three-fourths was required, in others the consent of four-fifths. This proportion has a look of fairness until we discover that we are dealing in terms, not of persons, but of property, and that the suffrages were not counted but weighed. The method by which the proportions were reckoned varied, as a glance at the cases described in the Appendix will show. Value is calculated sometimes in acres, sometimes in annual value, sometimes in assessment to the land tax, sometimes in assessment to the poor rate. It is important to remember that it was the property interested that counted, and that in a case where there was common or waste to be divided as well as open fields, one large proprietor, who owned a considerable property in old enclosures, could swamp the entire community of smaller proprietors and cottagers. If Squire Western owned an enclosed estate with parks, gardens and farms of 800 acres, and the rest of the parish consisted of a common or waste of 1000 acres and open fields of 200 acres, and the village population consisted of 100 cottagers and small farmers, each with a strip of land in the common fields, and a right of common on the waste, Squire Western would have a four-fifths majority in determining whether the open fields and the waste should be enclosed or not, and the whole matter would be in his hands. This is an extreme example of the way in which the system worked. The case of Ashelworth shows that a common might be cut up, on the votes of persons holding enclosed property, against the wishes of the great majority of the commoners. At Laleham the petitioners against the Bill claimed that they were ‘a great majority of the real Owners and Proprietors of or Persons interested in, the Lands and Grounds intended to be enclosed.’ At Simpson, where common fields were to be enclosed, the Major Part of the Owners and Proprietors petitioned against the Bill, stating that they were ‘very well satisfied with the Situation and Convenience of their respective Lands and Properties in their present uninclosed State.’[45]
Even a majority of three-fourths in value was not always required; for example, the Report of the Committee on the enclosure of Cartmel in Lancashire in 1796 gave particulars showing that the whole property belonging to persons interested in the enclosure was assessed at £150, and that the property of those actually consenting to the enclosure was just under £110.[46] Yet the enclosure was recommended and carried. Another illustration is supplied by the Report of the Committee on the enclosure of Histon and Impington in 1801, where the parties concerned are reported to have consented except the proprietors of 1020 acres, out of a total acreage of 3680.[47] In this case the Bill was recommitted, and on its next appearance the committee gave the consents in terms of assessment to the Land Tax instead, putting the total figure at £304, and the assessment of the consenting parties at £188. This seems to have satisfied the House of Commons.[48] Further, the particulars given in the case of the enclosure of Bishopstone in Wilts (enclosed in 1809) show that the votes of copyholders were heavily discounted. In this case the copyholders who dissented held 1079 acres, the copyholders who were neuter 81 acres, and the total area to be divided was 2602 acres. But by some ingenious actuarial calculation of the reversionary interest of the lord of the manor and the interest of the tithe-owner, the 1079 acres held by copyholders are written down to 474 acres.[49] In the cases of Simpson and Louth, as readers who consult the Appendix will see, the committees were satisfied with majorities just above three-fifths in value. At Raunds (see p. 39), where 4963 acres were ‘interested,’ the owners of 570 are stated to be against, and of 721 neuter.[50] An interesting illustration of the lax practice of the committees is provided in the history of an attempted enclosure at Quainton (1801).[51] In any case the signatures were a doubtful evidence of consent. ‘It is easy,’ wrote an acute observer, ‘for the large proprietors to overcome opposition. Coaxing, bribing, threatening, together with many other acts which superiors will make use of, often induce the inferiors to consent to things which they think will be to their future disadvantage.’[52] We hear echoes of such proceedings in the petition from various owners and proprietors at Armley, who ‘at the instance of several other owners of land,’ signed a petition for enclosure and wish to be heard against it, and also in the unavailing petition of some of the proprietors and freeholders of Winfrith Newburgh in Dorsetshire, in 1768,[53] who declared that if the Bill passed into law, their ‘Estates must be totally ruined thereby, and that some of the Petitioners by Threats and Menaces were prevailed upon to sign the Petition for the said Bill: but upon Recollection, and considering the impending Ruin,’ they prayed to ‘have Liberty to retract from their seeming Acquiescence.’ From the same case we learn that it was the practice sometimes to grant copyholds on the condition that the tenant would undertake not to oppose enclosure. Sometimes, as in the case of the Sedgmoor Enclosure, which we shall discuss later, actual fraud was employed. But even if the promoters employed no unfair methods they had one argument powerful enough to be a deterrent in many minds. For an opposed Enclosure Bill was much more expensive than an unopposed Bill, and as the small men felt the burden of the costs much more than the large proprietors, they would naturally be shy of adding to the very heavy expenses unless they stood a very good chance of defeating the scheme.
It is of capital importance to remember in this connection that the enumeration of ‘consents’ took account only of proprietors. It ignored entirely two large classes to whom enclosure meant, not a greater or less degree of wealth, but actual ruin. These were such cottagers as enjoyed their rights of common in virtue of renting cottages to which such rights were attached, and those cottagers and squatters who either had no strict legal right, or whose rights were difficult of proof. Neither of these classes was treated even outwardly and formally as having any claim to be consulted before an enclosure was sanctioned.
It is clear, then, that it was only the pressure of the powerful interests that decided whether a committee should approve or disapprove of an Enclosure Bill. It was the same pressure that determined the form in which a Bill became law. For a procedure that enabled rich men to fight out their rival claims at Westminster left the classes that could not send counsel to Parliament without a weapon or a voice. And if there was no lawyer there to put his case, what prospect was there that the obscure cottager, who was to be turned adrift with his family by an Enclosure Bill promoted by a Member or group of Members, would ever trouble the conscience of a committee of landowners? We have seen already how this class was regarded by the landowners and the champions of enclosure. No cottagers had votes or the means of influencing a single vote at a single election. To Parliament, if they had any existence at all, they were merely dim shadows in the very background of the enclosure scheme. It would require a considerable effort of the imagination to suppose that the Parliamentary Committee spent very much time or energy on the attempt to give body and form to this hazy and remote society, and to treat these shadows as living men and women, about to be tossed by this revolution from their ancestral homes. As it happens, we need not put ourselves to the trouble of such speculation, for we have the evidence of a witness who will not be suspected of injustice to his class. ‘This I know,’ said Lord Lincoln[54] introducing the General Enclosure Bill of 1845, ‘that in nineteen cases out of twenty, Committees of this House sitting on private Bills neglected the rights of the poor. I do not say that they wilfully neglected those rights—far from it: but this I affirm, that they were neglected in consequence of the Committees being permitted to remain in ignorance of the claims of the poor man, because by reason of his very poverty he is unable to come up to London for counsel, to produce witnesses, and to urge his claims before a Committee of this House.’ Another Member[55] had described a year earlier the character of this private Bill procedure. ‘Inclosure Bills had been introduced heretofore and passed without discussion, and no one could tell how many persons had suffered in their interests and rights by the interference of these Bills. Certainly these Bills had been referred to Committees upstairs, but everyone knew how these Committees were generally conducted. They were attended only by honourable Members who were interested in them, being Lords of Manor, and the rights of the poor, though they might be talked about, had frequently been taken away under that system.’
These statements were made by politicians who remembered well the system they were describing. There is another witness whose authority is even greater. In 1781 Lord Thurlow, then at the beginning of his long life of office as Lord Chancellor,[56] spoke for an hour and three quarters in favour of recommitting the Bill for enclosing Ilmington in Warwickshire. If the speech had been fully reported it would be a contribution of infinite value to students of the social history of eighteenth-century England, for we are told that ‘he proceeded to examine, paragraph by paragraph, every provision of the Bill, animadverting and pointing out some acts of injustice, partiality, obscurity or cause of confusion in each.’[57] Unfortunately this part of his speech was omitted in the report as being ‘irrelative to the debate,’ which was concerned with the question of the propriety of commuting tithes. But the report, incomplete as it is, contains an illuminating passage on the conduct of Private Bill Committees. ‘His Lordship ... next turned his attention to the mode in which private bills were permitted to make their way through both Houses, and that in matters in which property was concerned, to the great injury of many, if not the total ruin of some private families: many proofs of this evil had come to his knowledge as a member of the other House, not a few in his professional character, before he had the honour of a seat in that House, nor had he been a total stranger to such evils since he was called upon to preside in another place.’ Going on to speak of the committees of the House of Commons and ‘the rapidity with which private Bills were hurried through,’ he declared that ‘it was not unfrequent to decide upon the merits of a Bill which would affect the property and interests of persons inhabiting a district of several miles in extent, in less time than it took him to determine upon the propriety of issuing an order for a few pounds, by which no man’s property could be injured.’ He concluded by telling the House of Lords a story of how Sir George Savile once noticed a man ‘rather meanly habited’ watching the proceedings of a committee with anxious interest. When the committee had agreed on its report, the agitated spectator was seen to be in great distress. Sir George Savile asked him what was the matter, and he found that the man would be ruined by a clause that had been passed by the committee, and that, having heard that the Bill was to be introduced, he had made his way to London on foot, too poor to come in any other way or to fee counsel. Savile then made inquiries and learnt that these statements were correct, whereupon he secured the amendment of the Bill, ‘by which means an innocent, indigent man and his family were rescued from destruction.’ It would not have been very easy for a ‘meanly habited man’ to make the journey to London from Wakefield or Knaresborough or Haute Huntre, even if he knew when a Bill was coming on, and to stay in London until it went into committee; and if he did, he would not always be so lucky as to find a Sir George Savile on the committee—the public man who was regarded by his contemporaries, to whatever party they belonged, as the Bayard of politics.[58]