Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 9.djvu/144

 114 NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s.ix AUG. 6,1921. and hard-hearted farmers. Lord Loughborough, however, acted a more manly part, and gave due weight to the principles of law and the dictates of reason. " There can be no right of this sort," said he, " to be enjoyed in common except there is no cultivation, or where that right is supported by joint labour ; but here neither of these criteria will apply. The farmer is the sole cultivator of the land, and the gleaners gather each for himself, without regard either to joint labour or public advantage. If this custom were part of the Oommon Law, it would prevail in every part of the Kingdom, and be of general and uniform practice ; but in some districts it is wholly unknown, and in others variously modified and enjoyed. The law of Moses, cited as a foundation for this claim, -enjoins that a part of the crop shall remain unreaped by the owner of the field ; and such political institutions of the Jews cannot be obligatory upon us, since even under the Christian dispensation the relief of the poor is not a legal obligation but a religious duty. The conse- quence which would arise from such a custom being established as a right would be injurious to the poor themselves. Their sustenance can only arise from the surplus of productive industry ; whatever is a charge on industry is a very improvident diminution of the fund for that sustenance ; the profits of the farmer being lessened, he would be less able to contribute his share to the rates of the parish, and thus the poor, from the exercise of this supposed right in the autumn, would be liable to starve in the spring." Mr. Justice Heath stated that, from the best inquiries he was able to make, in some cojmties gleaning was exercised as a general right, in others it prevailed only in common fields, and not in enclosures, in others it was precarious and at the will of the occupiers. In the county in which that action was brought (Suffolk), it never in practice extended to barley, nor was the time ascertained. In some counties the poor gleaned whilst the corn was on the ground, but in the case before the Court the usage set up was to glean after the crop was housed. This case is probably the one referred to in the extract quoted by your correspondent, though it was a decision of the Common Pleas and not of the King's Bench. On the other hand, such a long continued and valued privilege as that of gleaning could hardly be put an end to at once, and it is quite possible that subsequent actions were brought on account of the practice being persisted -in against the wish of the farmer, but as such cases would establish no new principle they are not likely to have been reported. However this may be, the case of Steel v. Houghton is the one usually cited as establishing the principle that there is no legal right to glean (see Halsbury's ' Laws of England, 1 and Wharton's 'Law Lexicon 5 ). It is clear that the above case did not Eut an end to the practice of gleaning or casing. Most farmers continued to permit I it to the families of their labourers and their I poorer neighbours. Marshall ('Rural speaking of the district of Maidstone, says : Gleaning is, here, universally forbidden, until the crop be carried off the ground. I did not, at least, see a single instance of gleaning, either after the reapers, or among the shucks : not, however, through a want of " leasers," who
 * Economy of the Southern Counties,' 1798),
 * follow the harvest waggons, and flock into the

i fields, in numbers, after the ground is cleared. i Counties,' Min. 80. Unfortunately Marshall's volume on the Midland Counties is not accessible here so that I am unable to give his reflections. Vancouver (' General View of the Agri- culture of Hampshire,' 1813), p. 388, speaking of the Isle of Wight, states : The universal bread corn is wheat, which is used as well among the peasantry as in farm houses, and in the latter with the broad bran and coarse pollard only taken out. This economy prevails among the peasantry so long as their gleaning giists may last. When William Cobbett lived at Botley, Hants, he on one occasion forbade the poor people to come gleaning in his cornfields. A day or two afterwards, as he rode through the village, he saw written on a wall in large letters, " We will go a-leasin in spite of old ' Cob.' " Cobbett got off his horse, and rubbing out the word " leasin " substituted " thieving," and so left it. The Rev. William Barnes, in his ' Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect,* has several incidental allusions to the practice. For example : 'Tis merry while the wheat's in hile, Or when, by hill or hollow, The leazers thick do stoop to pick The ears so ripe an' yollow. Again : When leazers wi' their laps o' corn Noo longer be a-stoopen, An' in the stubble, all vorlorn, Noo poppies be a-droopen. And in another place : You leaz'd about the stubbly land, An' soon vill'd up your small left hand. Wi' ruddy ears your right hand vound, An' traifd the stalks along the ground. As a boy, in the Isle of Wight, I wall remember talk about the countryfolk going leasing in the cornfields.
 * For reflections on this subject, see ' Midland