[339] Ibid. p. 156.
[340] Ibid. p. 161.
5. A Petition Against Enclosure [Commons Journals[341] July 19, 1797], 1797.
A Petition of the hereunder-signed small Proprietors of Land and Persons entitled to Rights of Common [at Raunds, Northamptonshire].
That the petitioners beg leave to represent to the House that, under the pretence of improving lands in the same parish, the cottagers and other persons entitled to right of common on the lands intended to be enclosed, will be deprived of an inestimable privilege, which they now enjoy, of turning a certain number of their cows, calves, and sheep, on and over the said lands; a privilege that enables them not only to maintain themselves and their families in the depth of winter, when they cannot, even for their money, obtain from the occupiers of other lands the smallest portion of milk or whey for such necessary purpose, but in addition to this, they can now supply the grazier with young or lean stock at a reasonable price, to fatten and bring to market at a more moderate rate for general consumption, which they conceive to be the most rational and effectual way of establishing public plenty and cheapness of provision; and they further conceive, that a more ruinous effect of this enclosure will be the almost total depopulation of their town, now filled with bold and hardy husbandmen, from among whom, and the inhabitants of other open parishes, the nation has hitherto derived its greatest strength and glory, in the supply of its fleets and armies, and driving them, from necessity and want of employ, in vast crowds, into manufacturing towns, where the very nature of their employment, over the loom or the forge, soon may waste their strength, and consequently debilitate their posterity, and by imperceptible degrees obliterate that great principle of obedience to the Laws of God and their country, which forms the character of the simple and artless villagers, more equally distributed through the open counties, and on which so much depends the good order and government of the state. These are some of the injuries to themselves as individuals, and of the ill consequences to the public, which the petitioners conceive will follow from this, as they have already done from many enclosures, but which they did not think they were entitled to lay before the House (the constitutional patron and protector of the poor) until it unhappily came to their own lot to be exposed to them through the Bill now pending.
[341] Quoted Hammond, The Village Labourer, pp. 39-40.
6. Extracts on Enclosure From the Surveys of the Board of Agriculture, 1798-1809.
Somersetshire [J. Billingsley, Somerset, 1798, pp. 48-50 and 52].
Let us begin with taking a view of the objections which have been started to this species of improvement, and see if we cannot prove them to be for the most part either false or frivolous.
1st. Invasion of the rights and interest of the cottagers.