“ Cecil Graham: What is a cynic?Lord Darlington: A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Cecil Graham: And a sentimentalist, my dear Darlington, is a man who sees an absurd value in everything and doesn’t know the market price of a single thing.”
Oscar Wilde, Lady Windemere’s fan.
“The Open Fields (Wrong but Wromantic) and the Inclosures (Right but Repulsive)”
With apologies to W C Sellar & R J Yeatman 1066 and all that [1]
The core tenet of the Village Labourer was that the process of inclosure disadvantaged the poorer farmers and that the misfortunes which befell so many of them was not an accident but a deliberate consequence of the process of inclosure. Further they argued that “proposals that would have helped the poor were made by Arthur Young, by Eden, by Davies, by Suffield, and by the Board of Agriculture” and that “Those proposals were disregarded, not necessarily from wickedness or rapacity, but because the atmosphere of the ruling class was unfavourable”.
Without any form of mitigation the processes of inclosure created four connected effects. First, and foremost, the abolition of rights of common meant that many people lost their access to the waste which deprived them of a means of supporting themselves. Secondly, and in consequence of that, they were effectively demoted from the semi-independent status of ‘yeoman’ to the status of agricultural labourer, wholly dependent for survival on earning wages. The result was the creation of a large reservoir of labour, which as they could be hired and fired at will, drove down wages. This situation was arguably made worse by the adoption of the Speenhamland system in 1795. Poor relief, originally intended to support those who could not work, was now used to supplement the wages of those who could. The farmers were now relieved of the responsibility of paying a ‘living’ wage whilst the wider body of poor rate payers were left to make up the difference between the wage that was paid and the wage needed for survival.
The ‘atmosphere’ of the ruling class saw all of these things as positive advantages and to support their views that this was indeed the case the Hammonds produced ample evidence. [2] Typical is this quote from one Herefordshire farmer, John Clark: “The farmers in this county are often at a loss for labourers; the inclosure of the wastes would increase the numbers of hands for labour, by removing the means of subsisting in idleness.” [3] Mr Bishton, who wrote the Board of Agriculture Report on Shropshire in 1794 noted, “The use of common land by labourers operates upon the mind as a sort of independence.” This was certainly not conducive to the aristocrat in a time of rebellion [albeit in France]. He went on “When the commons are enclosed the labourers will work every day in the year, their children will be put out to labour early,’ and ‘that subordination of the lower ranks of society which in the present times is so much wanted, would be thereby considerably secured.’
Finally there was a moral dimension: Thomas Gisborne, MP for Derby, observed that commoners, “lived a very vagrant sort of life, more like gypsies than regular labourers and in every instance which he had known, these poor creatures had been benefited by being compelled to adopt more regular habits.” The habits he referred to being labour for wages. He incidentally was considered a social reformer.
As Thomas Gisborne, MP for Derby, observed, commoners ‘lived a very vagrant sort of life, more like gypsies than regular labourers and in every instance which he had known, these poor creatures had been benefited by being compelled to adopt more regular habits.” The habits that he referred to being labour for wages which, given the abundance of labourers that occurred after inclosure were able to be kept low. He, incidentally, was considered a social reformer.
At the heart of the debate was ‘the value of the thing’; just how was the value of a right of common to be calculated? At the level chosen by the inclosers it was easy enough. For example to buy a cow, in 1800, cost £5 [4], the cost of grazing considerably less, therefore the loss of the right to graze it on the waste in strict monetary terms could be no more than that. Mr John Billingsley, who wrote the Board of Agriculture Report on Somerset in 1795 reflected this view. For him the value of the waste only ended with “the sale of a half-fed calf, or hog” presumably of minimal value. Oddly however this small sum was still sufficient cause for moral degradation amongst the poor as it “furnishes the means of adding intemperance to idleness”.
The commoners had a rather different view of matters. The appeal to the House of Commons, brought by the villagers of Raunds in Nottinghamshire in 1797, against the inclosure of their parish appeared in full in The Village Labourer but is abridged [slightly] here:
“The Petitioners beg Leave to represent to the House that, under Pretence of improving Lands in the said Parish, the Cottagers and other Persons entitled to Right of Common on the Lands intended to be inclosed, will be deprived of an inestimable Privilege, which they now enjoy, of turning a certain Number of their Cows, Calves, and Sheep, on and over the said Lands ; a Privilege that enables them not only to maintain themselves and their Families in the Depth of Winter, when they cannot, even for their Money, obtain from the Occupiers of other Lands the smallest Portion of Milk or Whey for such necessary Purpose……”.
Here is the classic defence of the right of common pointing to the social value of the right as well as a purely monetary one. But it’s only a defence if you believe that people should be self reliant as independent as possible and that social values have a genuine value. In the late 18th and early 19th century this was the last thing that the ruling classes valued.
Then again consider the moral effects of the commons as described by Mr Billingsley; “The possession of a cow or two, with a hog, and a few geese, naturally exalts the peasant, in his own conception, above his brethren in the same rank of society. It inspires some degree of confidence in a property, inadequate to his support. In sauntering after his cattle, he acquires a habit of indolence. Quarter, half, and occasionally whole days are imperceptibly lost. Day labour becomes disgusting ; the aversion increases by indulgence”.
This of course written almost certainly by a man who would no doubt have found day labour disgusting had he been forced to do it. Once again the commoners of Raunds valued the right differently.
“…they further conceive, that a more ruinous Effect of this Inclosure will be the almost total Depopulation of their Town, now filled with bold and hardy Husbandmen, from among whom, and the Inhabitants of other Open Parishes, the Nation has hitherto derived its greatest Strength and Glory, in the Supply of its Fleets and Armies, and driving them, from Necessity and Want of Employ, in vast Crowds, into manufacturing Towns, where the very Nature of their Employment, over the Loom or the Forge, soon may waste their Strength, and consequently debilitate their Posterity, and by imperceptible Degrees obliterate that great Principle of Obedience to the Laws of God and their Country, which forms the Character of the simple and artless Villagers, more equally distributed through the Open Countries, and on which so much depends the good Order and Government of the State”.
The underlined section is particularly interesting as the villagers perceived that what was being lost by inclosure was not simply money, or even personal benefit, but the passing of the ancien régime. There is even a warning shot across parliament’s bows that civil unrest might result. It was to no avail. The ruling class no longer valued the old village ways , they were no longer comfortable with the blurred social distinctions of that society and above all they were no longer prepared to share their wealth with others.
Their appeal has a plaintive ending which echoes Pastor Niemoller [5]’s famous poem, “These are some of the Injuries to them-selves as Individuals, and of the ill Consequences to the Public, which the Petitioners conceive will follow from this, as they have already done from many Inclosures, but which they did not think they were entitled to lay before the House (the Constitutional Patron and Protector of the Poor) until it unhappily came to their own Lot to be exposed to them through the Bill now pending”.
The value system of the ruling class was no longer in accord with those below them. It was purely based on a monetary value and took no account of the wider value of the thing. Precisely how this was used to dispossess the poor of their rights is covered in the next section.
[1] 1066 AND ALL THAT: The original of course reads “The Cavaliers (Wrong but Wromantic) and the Roundheads (Right but Repulsive)”
[2] AMPLE EVIDENCE: You really have to read the book!
[3] SUBSISTING IN IDLENESS: Quoted by J M Neeson Commoners: Common Right, Enclosure and Social Change in England 1700-1820, 1993.
[4] £5: National Archive Currency Converter.
[5] PASTOR NIEMOLLER: “First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.”
Categories: In Depth
John Martin of Evershot 