Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/224

 from the government of an island, looked rather promising to Sancho himself, for it was a very simple proceeding. Sancho simply proposed to sell the inhabitants of the island for slaves, and put the money in his pocket. But to the people sold the plan might not appear so good as it did to Sancho.

Sancho Panza's scheme of getting rich, though it may wear the semblance of being only one of the elaborate jokes of him who was said to have "smiled Spain's chivalry away," has a melancholy affinity with certain schemes which, instead of being jocular and imaginary, are, on the contrary, too serious and too real. Since the year 1800, about two thousand inclosure acts have passed. Before that time about one thousand six hundred or one thousand seven hundred had passed. It was stated in evidence before the Committee of the House of Commons in 1844, that a large extent of common and waste land had been illegally inclosed under the provisions of the Act of 1836 (6 and 7 Wm. IV., c. 115), passed for facilitating the inclosure of open and arable fields in England and Wales; and the persons who hold such lands have no legal title, and can only obtain one by lapse of time. The chief motive for thus dealing with