In this book Dr. Slater shows that the movement for the enclosure of arable open and common fields has been a movement for the sweeping away of small holdings and small properties; that the “Village Community” which any Enclosure Act of this character abolished was essentially an organisation for agricultural co-operation. He shows that at least in certain parts of the country even in comparatively recent times enclosure has produced rural depopulation, and has converted the villager from “a peasant with a mediæval status to an agricultural labourer entirely dependent on a weekly wage.” He further makes us doubt whether these little village revolutions, while they temporarily stimulated agricultural progress by facilitating improved stock-breeding and the economy of labour, did not also to a certain extent destroy the opportunities of future progress by separating farmer from labourer by a gulf difficult to cross, and thus cutting off the supply of new recruits to the farming class. At the same time, whatever reasons there may be for regretting the enclosure of our Common Fields, and for wishing that the interests of the humbler tillers of the soil had been more sedulously guarded on enclosure, in the main the process was inevitable. Common field Agriculture was a survival of customs and institutions which had grown up when each village lived its life to a great extent in isolation. It was necessary that the villager should almost forget that he was a Little Pedlingtonian to realise that he was an Englishman. Village patriotism had to die down temporarily to make way for national patriotism; and when the spirit died out of the Village Community its form could not be preserved. Now and in the future there is need that local patriotism, pride in the local community, and willingness to serve it, whether it be village or city, should be kindled again to its old vigour. With the revival of the spirit will come a revival of some of the old forms of village common life, and a creation of new forms in place of those which will remain among the forgotten facts of the past. The Village Community is a hope of the future as well as a memory of the past, and therefore those who are interested in the movement for reviving British Agriculture on democratic lines and for improving the social and economic conditions of our villages have reason to welcome Dr. Slater’s attempt to describe existing and recent survivals of the English Village Community, and to ascertain the circumstances, causes, and consequences of its gradual extinction. CARRINGTON. _28th November, 1906._ THE ENGLISH PEASANTRY AND THE ENCLOSURE OF COMMON FIELDS. CHAPTER I. ENCLOSURE IN GENERAL.