The Sun.
London, England, 1844-03-25 00:00:00

COMMON LANDS INCLOSURE
BILL.

We wish to draw public attentiou to the importance
of Lord Worsley's Inclosure Bill, for when it is car-
ried, which we suppose will be the case, it will be
the basis of many similar measures. We assume the
principles—First, that the land that we have ought
to be turned to the most productive account ; and,
secondly, that it is bad policy to force bad lands into
cultivation at a great expense, when we can procure
land-produce at a much less price from other coun-
tries. We believe that a very large potion of the
common land brought under culture within the last
half century might, to our advantage, be again
turned into wilds and wastes, and we are sure that
a great many of the owners of these inclosed commons
would be very glad to get rid of their property if they
could find a fair price, or purchasers of any sort. But
let Inclosure Acts be what they may, they ought not
to trespass on the rights of the poor. Lord Worsley
draws nice distinctions between common and waste
land, and'commonable land. The end of these quib-
blings is, that the poor are to be robbed of whatever
they possess. Let lawyers quibble as they may about
the extent of the poor man's rights, certain is it that
of those rights he is to be deprived. Common and
waste land is attached to certain tenements, and al-
though those who may take leases of tenements,
with this right attached to them, _ may not care to
avail themselves of it, still, having paid the landlord
rent in proportion to the acquisition, such tenants
ought not forcibly to be deprived of that for which
they have actually paid. The principle is too
clear to be disputed. Commonable land may be
productive of corn, and some parts of it be productive
of only grass; the arable produce is always claimed
by some landowner or lord of the manor, whilst the
pasturage is the personal right of the inhabitants.
Here the cloven foot of lordly power is seen trampling
on the poor, for whilst the rich can pasture their cat-
tle all the year round, the poor can use the grass for
only two seasons. The Bill provides for the inclosure
and improvement of common and commonable lands.
The exchange of lands, the division of intermixed
land, and for the defective or incomplete execution of
the powers of general and local inclosure Acts. No
Bill ever brought into Parliament aimed at a hun-
dredth part of such arbitrary power. how is this
tyrannical Bill to be executed ? Hitherto no
inclosure, however small, could take place with-
out an Act of Parliament having passed the
Lords and Commons, and having received
the Royal assent. Now, Lord Worsley is to
execute his law by a s3t of Commissioners, who, be
assures us, will be unpaid. They need no payment,
fcr they will have pickings and parcellings, allotments
t nd opportunities, of preferences and denials, sufficient

"~ _

ito make their places immensely profitable. But no
man ever yet entertained the idea of a Commission
with a power of superseding Acts of Parliament.
Lord Worsley's Bill is nothing but an indirect prop
to the corn-laws. He tells us that his Bill will
call the industrious poor into employment, and pro-
duce a greater investment of capital in the land.
There is too much capital locked up in land already,
and as to the poor man's labour, abolish the corn-laws,
and employment for our poor will be ample ; whereas
Lord Worsley's Bill would not give to the poor through-
out England a four-pound loaf in a year for each in-
dividual. But food is not the only thing to be con-
sidered. The health, the ventilation, the recreations,
the sports, and general enjoyments of the poor are to
be taken into account. A great source of morals
proceeds from early associations, and the poor man,
in middle life, and especially in old age, is broken-
hearted at seeing torn from, and inclosed, in favour of
the rich, the land on which he gambolled in his child-
hood, and on which, perhaps, his mother kept a
goose or a pig. His Lordship's Bill holds out the
lure of draining commons, in too many of which
there is stagnant water. This drainage ought to
be effected by the magistrates, or the parishes ;
but the new Commissioners having drained the
land, take it all as possessions of the rich. A
large common may have stagnant pools, pestilential
to all persons around it ; but surely we are not driven
to the alternative of letting the nuisance continue, or
of suffering a landlord, in reward for draining the
pond, to seize upon the land ? The new Commis-
sioners are to let ground for burial-places, for
chapels, and for schools, &c.; in fact, a Commission
with more arbitrary or more extensive powers, never
was proposed to Parliament. The petty commoners
go sadly to the wall. His Lordship boasts that his
Bill will throw no charges on the Consolidated Fund.
It need not do so, for it robs the poor to such an
extent, that the Bill can pay its own expenses.
Lands, in England, are much intermixed, that is to
say, a humble man may possess a few acres, sur-
rounded by larger estates. He refuses to alter his
course of husbandry to meet the wishes of
his richer neighbours. This Bill presumes
that such a division of land is inconvenient.
Inconvenient to whom ? Of course to the
rich man, and the Bill gives the Commissioners a
power to alter the arrangement or possession of pro-
perty ; thus a humble man, who may be as proud of
a small possession, inherited from his virtuous fore-
fathers—as proud even as those Dukes that inherit
their large estates from the profligacy of their an-
cestral mothers with Charles 11., may be hustled out
of his property with very little ceremony, whilst, if
we attempt to invade the pensions, of immense
amount, granted by Charles 11. to his six or eight
mistresses, we are reproached with designs of attack-
ing the right of property. In the woodlands of
England there are glades, or intervening small
pasturages, of course belonging to the humble
classes. The woods are the possession of the rich,
the small pasturages are the property of the poorer
proprietors. It is urged that these owners of pas-
turages have an interest in injuring the wood. What
is to be the remedy? The owners of forests are to
be empowered to do what they.please with the owners
of the small pasturages. There is no appeal to a
jury; no not even to the quarter-sessions. But the
Commissioners are to do all—these Commissioners,
of course, being of the upper classes, and having local
interests, prejudices, and attachments. It is com-
pletely a Bill of spoliation. Great evils unquestion-
ably exist in our tenures of land ; but they are not to
be removed by a sweeping measure of this sort.—
Weekly Dispatch.