13. Sir Thomas More echoes the same complaints:"Noblemen and gentlemen, yea, and even certain abbots, not contentingthemselves with the yearly revenues and profits that were wont to grow to their forefathers and predecessors of their lands,leave no ground for tillage. They inclose all into pastures; they throw down houses; they pluck down towns, and leavenothing standing. And as though you lost no ground by forests, chase lands, and parks, those good holy men turn alldwelling-places and all glebe-lands into desolation and wilderness."In the Utopia, a strange country is mentioned where sheep devour men. Bacon, in his History of Henry VII., boasts of theacts of Parliament and the wisdom of the King, checking the usurpations of the great, the effect of which was to take thecommon lands from the inhabitants, to destroy the dwelling-houses, and to depopulate the country.
14. The encroachments of lords of the manor on commons have been carried on in our own days. Some very curious detailson this point may be found in a letter addressed by Mr Shaw Lefevre to the Times (17 Nov. 1874) with regard to EppingForest. Going back no further than 1851, 559 illegal enclosures had been made in this forest, which was common property inwhich the city of London had the right of common pasture. The inhabitants of the neighbourhood were entitled to gatherfuel there in winter, on this condition, however, that every year on December 11, at midnight, the oldest of them should fixhis axe in one of the trees. A story is told of a certain Lord of the Manor who wanted to interrupt this prescription. On thegiven day he invited all the inhabitants to a supper, hoping to make them drunk, and make them forget the exercise of theirright. An old man, however, stole away and fixed the axe in the forest. Later bn a common workman named Willingdaleresisted for thirty-seven years the enclosure made by the lord of the manor of Loughton. "It was about this time that greatportions of Epping Forest were arbitrarily enclosed. In one single manor of that Forest the lord of Loughton, who was alsorector of the parish, enclosed no less than 1300 acres of common. Sir Thomas Wilson, the Lord of the Manor of Hampstead,commenced the enclosure of that much-frequented common, and demanded ?00,000 as the market value of it. The lateLord Brownlow enclosed 500 acres of Berkhampstead common with iron rails, and added them to his park. Queen'sCollege, Oxford, was similarly advised by its solicitors to appropriate two important commons in the south of Londonviz.
Plumstead Heath and Bostal Heath, besides a smaller open space, known as Shoulder-of-Mutton Green. An enclosure wasalso made of Tooting Graveney Common. If these proceedings had passed unnoticed, there can be no doubt that in a veryshort time all the commons in and round London would speedily have disappeared."The City of London, in an action to stop these encroachments, gained its ease. A judgment of November, 1874, declaredillegal all enclosures effected since 1851 on an extent of 3200 acres. At the present time the magistrates of the City betakethemselves annually with great pomp to the Forest, in recollection of the right of hunting which they formerly exercisedthere. According to Mr Shaw Lefevre, there still remain, within a radius of fifteen miles from London, sixty commons of anaverage area of 130 acres, and 120 smaller commons with an average area of 20 acres. The thirty-second Report of theEnclosures Commission (1877) estimates that there still remain in England 2,000,000 acres of common land. Since 1845,600,000 acres have been enclosed. See an excellent article by Miss Octavia Hill: "The Future of our Commons," FortnightlyReview , Nov. 1877.
15. These details are borrowed from Karl Marx, Das Kapital , c. xxiv. It is perhaps too severe a picture of the concentrationof property in England, but a great number of curious, and perhaps little known, quotations may be found in it. See also H.
Penis, Tendances actuelles du prolétariat européen, in the Revue de Philosophic positive , March 1872 to January 1875.
16. Thomas Wright, A short Address to the Public on the Monopoly of Large Farms , 1779, p. 25.
17. Addington, Enquiry into the Reasons for or against Enclosing Open Fields . London, 1772, pp. 37, 43, passim.
18. Dr B. Price, Vol. II. p. 155. Consult too Forster, Addington. Kent, and James Anderson (Karl Marx, Das Kapital . p.
756).
[After considerable search in the library of the British Museum I have been unable to find the original of these works, andam therefore compelled to retranslate most of the passages here cited,]
19. See A Letter to Sir T. C. Bunbury, On the High Prices of Provisions, by a Suffolk Gentleman , Ipswich, 1795; p. 4. Aviolent partisan of large farms, the author of the treatise An Enquiry into the connections of Large Farms, &c. , London,1773, himself says (p. 133): "I most lament the loss of our yeomanry, that set of men who really kept up the independence ofthis nation; and sorry I am to see their lands now in the hands of monopolizing lords, tenanted out to small farmers, whohold their leases on such conditions, as to be little better than vassals ready to attend a summons on every mischievousmessage." Karl Marx, Das Kapital , p. 752.
20. James Anderson, Observations on the means of exciting a Spirit of National Industry . Edinburgh, 1777.
21. George Ensor, An Inquiry into the Population of Nations , London, 1818, pp. 215, 216. See Karl Marx, Das Kapital , p.
759.
22. De Laudibus Legum Angliae , Cap. 2956.
23. See note A at end of volume.
