Page:The English Peasant.djvu/166

 Nothing brutalises human beings so rapidly as withdrawal from the influences of society; and when the morality of a common is said to be comparatively good, as I am told in some cases it is, I think it will be found that the cottagers to whom the statement refers live in small villages, not in isolated dwellings. When this is the case, a standard of morality is maintained among them, according to the ideal of those who, from position or character, are their guides and leaders.

But, as a rule, life on a common is an isolated one. And when this is the case, to quote the testimony of a clergyman living in the neighbourhood of the extensive commons in the south-west of Surrey, "people who live at a distance from the villages always fall away in morality." A minister who has laboured for the last ten years on very extensive commons in the centre of Surrey speaks of their morality and religion as being in the lowest state. The young people of both sexes are very corrupt—little virtue, in fact, is to be found anywhere; much drunkenness prevails, and a disposition to live without regular employment. The corruption of the young is mainly due to want of regular employment and gross ignorance. They often do not go to school at all, but spend their time wandering over the common gathering wood, or wild fruit.

In such places they are, practically, of the same religion as their forefathers, "the Heathens." The dark superstitions which once held sway over every part of rural England still haunt these wild wastes. The people yet believe in witchcraft, and think that the person bewitched has the right and the power to kill the witch by certain enchantments. My friend assures me that such opinions not only prevail, but that he has known them acted upon in several cottages.

"To him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath not shall be taken away that which he seemeth to have." This is the rule of the present system of enclosure. But it is so bad that, until it is altered, it would be better to leave things as they are. It is hardly fair that a few persons who have allowed their so-called rights to lie dormant for years, perhaps centuries, should now, when the country has awoke to the value of its waste lands, come forward and quietly divide them among themselves. The rich are