Page:The English Peasant.djvu/161

 Since the Inclosure Act has been passed, a clearer idea has obtained of the legal aspect of the question, and accordingly on some commons the freeholders have succeeded in entirely stopping the cottagers from exercising any privileges whatever. On other commons, where the cottagers are numerous, it would be impossible to do so without force. I know of one common where few of the persons who use it could probably prove their legal right to do so. As the common-driver told me, he could rise up any morning and drive off all the cattle and sheep on it, but he is not likely to attempt it. This common adjoins another belonging to a different manor, and yet the sheep of people living in one wander at their own sweet will over the boggy slopes of the other.

In the middle of the latter common I found a poor woman, living in a very comfortable cottage. Her husband was a labourer, and they had brought up a numerous family on 2s. a-day, but it did not appear that they had ever thought of making any use of the common. And yet she told me of one man who had about 200 sheep which he turned out every day. Of course he had no right, or at least no right to pasture for one-tenth part of the number. All he could have urged in support of his encroachment would be contained in the old saying—

The fact is, the majority of the lords of the manors do not care to stop these encroachments. They know they can make no use of the common themselves, and they have no wish to play the part of the dog in the manger.

And this leads me to speak of those for whose advantage these extensive wastes really exist.

There is a class of self-willed, determined, acquisitive sort of men, to the production of which common life is especially favourable, because it gives freedom from all restraint; permits the development of peculiarities without hindrance, and in the doubt which hangs over the character and extent of its rights, gives a stimulus to such natures to get all they can. These are the people who make a living out of the commons.

I got into company with such a man on a walk I made to a