for them. There would be persons under age, there were married women, there were lunatics. To get the legal consent of such persons was troublesome, and sometimes uncertain. So to make short work with them all, the "General Enclosure Act" of 1845 was passed, and a permanent "Enclosure Commission" (now called "the Land Commission") was appointed to submit proposals to Parliament.
Eleven years before this act was passed, Mr Pryme, a member of the first reformed Parliament, tried to get some of the newly-enclosed land allotted to the poor. On the 25th of February 1834, he moved that the Committee on every Enclosure Bill should certify in their report whether a portion of land, as near the village as might be, and not less than in the proportion of one acre to every twenty-five inhabitants, had been directed to be allotted "out of the communable lands or waste grounds." Pryme said the idea was not new. The experiment had been tried. In November 1830, when rick-burning was going on, it was found that labourers having allotments were never concerned in outrages. In a Cambridgeshire parish, half-an-acre of land was given to each labourer, on the understanding that he would be discharged if he did not pay the rent. It had been necessary to discharge only two, the poor rates had diminished, and the habits of the labourers had greatly improved. The motion was rejected by a great majority, on the plea that it would take from the landowner a portion of that which was his by right. Pryme replied, very justly, that the same might be said against taking land for a new road. If roads are a public benefit, so is the diminution of pauperism. The testimony is everywhere and at all times the same—give the poor man a bit of land, and poor rates decrease, and the character of the poor improves. But the House elected rather to build workhouses. This story is an example of the way in which in England property in land is regarded, as compared with other property. To take a few acres of land—sure to be the poorest land in the parish, and as certainly stolen from the poor at some time or other, was "taking from the owner a portion of that which was his by right"; but the alternative, of levying a heavy poor rate on the owner to pay for a workhouse was just as much a taking from him that which was his, only in the latter case he was only deprived of money. The money
