Gradually the labourer and small cultivator lost the use they had made of the road-side and other waste which were assigned under inclosure acts, not to the occupier, but _the owner_ of the cottage; few cottages were in the occupation of their owners; they generally, indeed we may say universally, belonged to the proprietors of the neighbouring farms, and the allotments granted in lieu of the extinguished common rights were generally added to the large farms, and seldom attached to the cottages. The cottages which were occupied by their owners had of course allotments attached to them; but these by degrees passed by sale into the hands of some large proprietor in the neighbourhood, _De facto_, in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred, the allotment has been detached from the cottage, and thrown into the occupation of some adjoining farmer. That such a charge should have been attended with important consequences, can excite no surprise, a complete severance was effected between the peasantry and the soil; the little farmers and cottiers were converted into day-labourers, depending entirely upon daily earnings which may, and frequently did, in point of fact, fail them. They had no land upon the produce of which to fall as a reserve when the demand for labour happened to be slack. This revolution became unquestionably the cause of the heavy and increasing burdens upon parishes in the form of poor-rates, and jail rates. It has been well said that from the moment when any man begins to think that ‘The world is not his friend, nor the world’s law,’ the world and the world’s law are likely to have that man for their enemy; and if he does not commence direct hostilities against them, he abandons himself to despair, and becomes a useless if not a hurtful member of the community.