Page:The English Peasant.djvu/77

 Lord Bacon said of the Act of 1487, "to breed a subject to live in "convenient plenty and no servile condition, and to keep the plough in the hands of the owners, and not mere hirelings."

And the result sought was obtained, for, towards the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th centuries, contemporary authorities declare that the condition of the labourers and small tenants in husbandry " had grown to be more powerful, skilful, and careful, through recompense of gain, than heretofore they had been."

This prosperity, dimmed for a time by the Civil War, was not seriously affected by it, for in the reign of Charles II. there were, according to the best statistical writers of the time, not less than 160,000 proprietors, who, with their families, must have made up a seventh part of the whole population who derived their subsistence from little freehold estates. This second era of agricultural well-being continued until the middle of the 18th century, when, from all accounts, it culminated. Prior to the American War, the English peasantry were, generally speaking, in a comparatively prosperous condition. They were reaping the advantage of the expanding commerce of the country without any corresponding diminution in their resources.

But with the improvement and extension of modern husbandry commenced the depression and decay of the husbandmen. It was found that large farms could be managed more profitably than small ones. Thus the poor and the weak began to fall into the ranks of the hired labourer, while their richer neighbour rose in the social scale.

Few things had more helped the mass of English peasants than the freedom they had enjoyed to use the common lands. But from about the middle of the last century commenced that wholesale private appropriation of common property which has so largely helped to complete the ruin of the English peasant. Between 1710, the date of the first Inclosure Act, and 1760, only 334,974 statute acres were inclosed, while, in the century which followed, more than seven millions of statute acres have been added to the cultivated area of Great Britain.

In a speech made by Mr Cowper-Temple (Lord Mount-Temple), on the second reading of the general Inclosure Bill,