point of view of the money which can be made out of them, and appear scarcely to take into account that the man may be obtaining more than half his food from his bit of land, and if so, he is getting a great deal more than the money—he is getting money's worth. Until we take into account this money's worth we shall never form a practical idea of the "success" or "failure" of small holdings. Another argument used against small holdings is that the cottages of English labourers are more "comfortable" than those of French or German peasants. I have even seen the flowers in an English cottage window mentioned as though they were a sort of set-off to the independence of the Swiss—who, these persons assure us, never have any flowers in their windows. How much happier is the English agricultural labourer, say these persons. How comfortable is his cottage; how much the squire and the parson do for him in the winter; how rough and unrefined is the life of a French peasant in comparison! But these persons quite forget that the French peasant is independent; he has not to please the squire, or be compelled to leave his village. He can, if he chooses, and has the money, build a house upon his land, to accommodate a grown-up son—there is no squire to say that no new houses shall be built. The French peasant saves money—did he not pay the indemnity demanded by the Prussians?—but first of all, he lives on his land. In years gone by, English peasants did the same, and if they do not do it now, it is because the classes above them have contrived to deprive them of that land.
Occasionally, but very occasionally, in these enclosures, there was some thought of "the poor." In the manor of Barnardcastle (Durham), for instance, "several small tracts of waste land lying on the side of one of the outskirts, and on the skirts of the public roads, together with a narrow slip of moor, which only invited vagabonds, who sought to harbour and maintain their half-starved asses, and were not of any material benefit to the legal settlers, were by the act invested in the commissioners, in trust to be sold, and the product was thereby directed to be applied to the relief of poor persons belonging to Barnardcastle, who do not receive alms. By this means, after paying all expenses, 17 poor persons are relieved … they are elected by the select vestrymen and sidesmen for life. The men receive £5
