The English Peasantry and the Enclosure of Common FieldsSlater, Gilbert
History
The English Peasantry and the Enclosure of Common Fields
Slater, Gilbert
Agriculture -- England; Inclosures; Peasants -- England; Village communities -- Great Britain
(8) Those who have no land whatever. “This is a very bad situation for
a labourer to be placed in, both for his comfort and the education of
his children.”
Then he continues, in words which seem in general as true and weighty
now as when written or as at any time within the last hundred
years:--“In countries where it has never been the custom for labourers
to keep cows, it would be very difficult to introduce it; but where
no gardens have been annexed to the cottages it is sufficient to give
the ground, and the labourer is sure to know what to do with it, and
will reap an immediate benefit from it ... there should be as much as
will produce all the garden stuff the family consumes, and enough,
with the addition of a little meal, for a pig. I think they ought to
pay the same rent that a farmer would pay for the land, and no more.
I am persuaded that it frequently happens that a labourer lives in a
house at 20_s._ a year rent, which he is unable to pay, to which, if a
garden of a rood was added, for which he would have to pay five or ten
shillings a year more, that he would be enabled, by the profit he would
derive from the garden, to pay the rent of the house, etc., with great
advantage to himself.
“As I before mentioned, some difficulties may occur in establishing
the custom of labourers keeping cows in those parts of the country
where no such custom has existed; wherever it has or does exist
it ought by all means to be encouraged, and not suffered to fall
into disuse, as has been the case to a great degree in the midland
counties, one of the causes of which I apprehend to be, the dislike
the generality of farmers have to seeing the labourers rent any land.
Perhaps one of their reasons for disliking this is, that the land, if
not occupied by the labourers, would fall to their share; and another,
I am afraid, is, that they rather wish to have the labourers more
dependent upon them, for which reasons they are always desirous of
hiring the house and land occupied by a labourer, under pretence, that
by that means the landlord will be secure of his rent, and that they
will keep the house in repair. This the agents of estates are too apt
to give in to, as they find it much less trouble to meet six than sixty
tenants at a rent day, and by this means avoid the being sometimes
obliged to hear the wants and complaints of the poor.” ... The landlord
naturally yields to this pressure ... “and it is in this manner that
the labourers have been dispossessed of their cow-pastures in various
parts of the midland counties. The moment the farmer obtains his wish,
he takes every particle of the land to himself, and relets the house to
the labourer, who by this means is rendered miserable, the poors rate
increased, the value of the estate to the landlord diminished, and the
house suffered to go to decay.... Whoever travels through the midland
counties, and will take the trouble of enquiring, will generally
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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