Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/225

 commons appears to have been that they thus get the inclosure done cheaper than by applying to Parliament for a private act.

Those persons whose passion for getting rich has induced them to make such use of the English law and English Parliament, have deprived themselves of any right to complain, if those Englishmen who have not derived any benefit from the inclosures of common land should take leave to inquire somewhat minutely into the whole subject of property in land.

Those who seek to go on increasing their riches by the inclosure of commons or waste land may say, if they think fit, that they are increasing the productiveness of their country, and as a consequence, its population; but they are destroying the natural beauty of their country, and more than the natural beauty, the ideas associated in the mind of man, with solitary meditation in fresh air and amid wild flowers and clear streams. With the inclosure of commons and waste land is closely connected the stopping up of public footpaths and ancient rights of way, and the rooting up every hedge-row and hedge-row tree, and ploughing up every place where a wild flower or shrub could grow. I will quote some remarks from J. S. Mill