In both societies the aristocracy regarded the poor in much the same spirit, as a problem of discipline and order, and passed on to posterity the same vague suggestion of squalor and turbulence. Thus it comes that most people who think of the poor in the Roman Republic think only of the great corn largesses; and most people who think of the poor in eighteenth-century England think only of the great system of relief from the rates. Mr. Warde Fowler has shown how hard it is to find in the Roman writers any records of the poor. So it is with the records of eighteenth-century England. In both societies the obscurity which surrounded the poor in life has settled on their wrongs in history. For one person who knows anything about so immense an event as the disappearance of the old English village society, there are a hundred who know everything about the fashionable scenes of high politics and high play, that formed the exciting world of the upper classes. The silence that shrouds these village revolutions was not quite unbroken, but the cry that disturbed it is like a noise that breaks for a moment on the night, and then dies away, only serving to make the stillness deeper and more solemn. The Deserted Village is known wherever the English language is spoken, but Goldsmith’s critics have been apt to treat it, as Dr. Johnson treated it, as a beautiful piece of irrelevant pathos, and his picture of what was happening in England has been admired as a picture of what was happening in his discolouring dreams. Macaulay connected that picture with reality in his ingenious theory, that England provided the village of the happy and smiling opening, and Ireland the village of the sombre and tragical end. One enclosure has been described in literature, and described by a victim, John Clare, the Northamptonshire peasant, who drifted into a madhouse through a life of want and trouble. Those who recall the discussions of the time, and the assumption of the upper classes that the only question that concerned the poor was the question whether enclosure increased employment, will be struck by the genuine emotion with which Clare dwells on the natural beauties of the village of his childhood, and his attachment to his home and its memories. But Clare’s day was brief and he has few readers.[489] In art the most undistinguished features of the most undistinguished members of the aristocracy dwell in the glowing colours of a Reynolds; the poor have no heirlooms, and there was no Millet to preserve the sorrow and despair of the homeless and dispossessed. So comfortably have the rich soothed to sleep the sensibilities of history. These debonair lords who smile at us from the family galleries do not grudge us our knowledge of the escapades at Brooks’s or at White’s in which they sowed their wild oats, but we fancy they are grateful for the poppy seeds of oblivion that have been scattered over the secrets of their estates. Happy the race that can so engage the world with its follies that it can secure repose for its crimes.
De Quincey has compared the blotting out of a colony of Alexander’s in the remote and unknown confines of civilisation, to the disappearance of one of those starry bodies which, fixed in longitude and latitude for generations, are one night observed to be missing by some wandering telescope. ‘The agonies of a perishing world have been going on, but all is bright and silent in the heavenly host.’ So is it with the agonies of the poor. Wilberforce, in the midst of the scenes described in this volume, could declare, ‘What blessings do we enjoy in this happy country; I am reading ancient history, and the pictures it exhibits of the vices and the miseries of men fill me with mixed emotions of indignation, horror and gratitude.’ Amid the great distress that followed Waterloo and peace, it was a commonplace of statesmen like Castlereagh and Canning that England was the only happy country in the world, and that so long as the monopoly of their little class was left untouched, her happiness would survive. That class has left bright and ample records of its life in literature, in art, in political traditions, in the display of great orations and debates, in memories of brilliant conversation and sparkling wit; it has left dim and meagre records of the disinherited peasants that are the shadow of its wealth; of the exiled labourers that are the shadow of its pleasures; of the villages sinking in poverty and crime and shame that are the shadow of its power and its pride.
APPENDIX A (1)
The information about Parliamentary Proceedings in Appendix A is taken from the Journals of the House of Commons or of the House of Lords for the dates mentioned. The place where the Award is at present enrolled is given, where possible, under the heading ‘Award.’ A Return, asked for by Sir John Brunner, was printed February 15, 1904, of Inclosure Awards, deposited with Clerks of the Peace or of County Councils.
Armley, Leeds, Yorks.—Enclosure Act, 1793
Area.—About 175 acres.
Nature of Ground.—Waste Ground, called Armley Moor or Common.
Parliamentary Proceedings.—February 21, 1793.—Petition for enclosure from ‘several of the Owners of Lands within the Manor and Township of Armley,’ stating that this parcel of waste ground is, in its present state, incapable of improvement. Leave given, bill presented March 15.
March 28.—Petition against the bill from various owners and proprietors of Messuages, Cottages, Lands and Tenements who ‘by virtue thereof, or otherwise, have an indisputable Right of Common upon the said Moor,’ stating that ‘they conceive that an Inclosure of the said Moor and Waste Ground would be productive of no Advantage to any of the Proprietors claiming a Right of Common thereon, but, on the contrary, would very materially injure and prejudice their respective Estates in the said Townships, by laying upon the said Township the Burthen of making, maintaining, and repairing the necessary new Roads, which must be set out to a considerable Extent over the said Moor and Waste Ground, and also by increasing the Poors Rate, inasmuch as the Petitioners conceive that the Inhabitants of the said Town of Armley, who are very numerous, and principally poor Manufacturers of broad Woollen Cloth, receive considerable Benefit and Advantage from the present open State of the said Moor and Waste Ground, particularly in having Tenters and Frames to stretch and dry their Cloth, Warps, and Wool, after it has been dyed, put up and fixed upon the said Moor and Waste Ground, which Privileges and Advantages have hitherto conduced to alleviate the Distresses and Hardships of the said poor Manufacturers in the said Township of Armley, and which, if the said Inclosure takes Place, they will be totally deprived of and reduced to Poverty and Want.’ The Petition was ordered to be heard on second reading.
April 9.—Bill read a second time. House informed that Petitioners declined to be heard on second reading. The Petition was referred to the Committee.