only £16 in money, the rest being made up by rights of grazing live-stock, growing crops on his master’s land, and kindred privileges. That is exactly in the spirit that used to pervade agriculture, and doubtless had its origin in the manorial system. If we turn back to the 13th century, from Walter of Henley’s Husbandry it will be seen that practically there were only two classes engaged in agriculture, and corresponding with them were two kinds of land. There were, on the one hand, the employer, the lord, and his demesne land; on the other, the villeins and the land held in villenage. Putting aside for the moment any discussion of the exact degree of servitude, it will be seen that the essence of the bargain was that the villein should be permitted to cultivate a virgate of land for his own use in return for service rendered on the home farm. This is not altered by the fact that the conditions approached those of slavery, that the villeins were adscripti glebae, that in some cases their wives and sons were bequeathed by deed to the service of religious houses, and that in many other respects their freedom was limited. Out of this, in the course of centuries, was developed the system prevailing to-day. Lammas lands are indeed a survival from it. There are in the valley of the Lea, and close to London, to take one example, lands allotted annually in little strips till the crops are carried, when, the day being fixed by a reeve, the land becomes a common pasture till the spring closing takes place once more. Perhaps the feature of this old system that bears most directly on the question of allotments was the treatment of the waste of the manor. The lord, like his tenants, was limited by custom as regards the number of beasts he could graze on it. After the havoc of the Black Death in 1349, many changes were necessitated by the scarcity and dearness of labour. It became less unusual for land to be let and for money payment to be accepted instead of services. There was a great demand for wool, and to conduct sheep-farming on a large scale necessitated a re-arrangement of the manor and the enclosure of many common fields under the statute of Merton and the statute of Westminster the Second. Nevertheless, up to the 18th century, a vast proportion of agricultural land was technically waste, on which rights of common were exercised by yeomen, some of whom had acquired holdings by the ordinary methods of purchase or inheritance, while others had merely squatted and built a house on the waste. It is to this period that belongs a certain injustice to which the peasantry were subject. No reasonable doubt can be entertained of the necessity of enclosure. Husbandry, after long stagnation, was making great advance; and among others, Arthur Young raised his voice against the clumsy inconvenient common fields that were the first to be enclosed. Between 1709 and 1797 no fewer than 3110 acts, affecting, as far as can be calculated, about 3,000,000 acres, were put into operation. They seem mostly to have been directed to the common fields. In the first half of the 19th century the movement went on apace. In a single year, 1801, no fewer than 119 acts were passed; and between 1801 and 1842 close on 2000 acts were passed—many of them expressly directed to the enclosure of wastes and commons. The same thing continued till 1869. It touched the peasant directly and indirectly. The enclosure of the common fields proved most hurtful to the small farmer; the enclosure of the waste injured the labourer by depriving him, without adequate compensation, of such useful privileges as the right to graze a cow, a pig, geese or other small animals. It also discouraged him by tending to the extinction of small tenancies and freeholds that were no longer workable at a profit when common rights ceased to go with them. The industrious labourer could previously nourish a hope of bettering his condition by obtaining a small holding. Yet though the labourer suffered, impartial study does not show any intentional injustice. He held a very weak position when those interested in a common affixed to the church door a notice that they intended to petition. As Mr Cowper (afterwards Lord Mount Temple) said in the House of Commons on the 13th of March 1844, “the course adopted had been to compensate the owner of the cottage to whom the common right belonged, forgetting the claims of the occupier by whom they were enjoyed”; and in the same debate Sir Robert Peel pointed out that not only the rights of the tenant, but those of his successors ought to have been studied. The course adopted divorced the labourer from the soil.
Parliament, as a matter of fact, had from a very early period recognized the wisdom of contenting the peasant. In the 14th century the labourer lived in rude abundance. Next century a rural exodus began, owing to the practice of enclosing the holdings and turning them into sheep walks. In 1487 an act was passed enjoining landlords to “keep up houses of husbandry,” and attach convenient land to them. Within the next hundred years a number of similar attempts were made to control what we may call the sheep fever of the time. Then we arrive at the reign of Elizabeth and the famous Small Holdings Act passed in 1597—an anticipation of the three-acres-and-a-cow policy advocated towards the end of the 19th century. It required that no person shall “build, convert or ordain any cottage for habitation or dwelling for persons engaged in husbandry” unless the owner “do assign or lay to the same cottage or building four acres of ground at the least.” It also provided against any “inmate or under-sitter” being admitted to what was sacred to one family. This measure was not conceived in the spirit of modern political economy, but it had the effect of staying the rural exodus. It was repealed in 1775 on the ground that it restricted the building of cottages. By that time the modern feeling in favour of allotments had begun to ripen, and it was contended that some compensation should be made to the labourers for depriving them of the advantages of the waste. Up to then the English labouring rustic had been very well off. Food was abundant and cheap, so were clothes and boots; he could graze his cow or pig on the common, and also obtain fuel from it. Now he fell on evil days. Prices rose, wages fell, privileges were lost, and in many cases he had to sell the patch of land whose possession made all the difference between hardship and comfort. All this was seen plainly enough both by statesmen and private philanthropists. One of the first experiments was described by Sir John Sinclair in a note to the report of a select committee of the House of Commons on waste lands in 1795. About 1772 the lord of the manor of some commonable lands near Tewkesbury had with great success set out 25 acres in allotments for the use of some of the poor. Sir John was very much struck with the result, and so heartily applauded the idea that the committee recommended that any general enclosure bill should have a clause in it providing for “the accommodation of land.” Sir Thomas Bernard and W. Wilberforce took an active part in advocating the principle of allotments, on the ground, to summarize their argument in language employed later by a witness before the House of Commons, that “it keeps the cottagers buoyant and makes them industrious.” In 1806, at the suggestion of the rector, a clause assigning an allotment of half an acre to every cottage was inserted in an enclosure bill then under consideration for the parish of Broad Somerford in Wiltshire. This was done, “and the example was followed by nearly every adjoining parish in that part of Wiltshire.” Passing over several praiseworthy establishments of allotments by private persons, we come to 1819, when parliament passed an act akin in spirit to several that came into existence during the later portion of the Victorian era. It empowered the churchwardens and overseers of any parish, with the consent of the vestry, to purchase or hire land not exceeding 25 acres, and to let it in portions to “any poor and industrious inhabitant of the parish.” This was amended in 1831 by an act extending the quantity of land to 50 acres, and also conveying an important new power to enable the same authorities to enclose from any waste or common, land not exceeding 50 acres to be devoted to the same purpose. This was followed next year by an act relating to fuel, and in 1834 the Poor Law Commissioners reported favourably on the principle of granting allotments. In 1843 an important inquiry into the subject was made by a committee of the House of Commons, which produced a number of valuable suggestions. One consequence was the bill of 1845, brought into parliament by Mr Cowper. It passed the House of Commons; and there Mr Bright made a remark that probably summarized a general
