was to be spent in making paupers, while the allotments would have diminished the number of paupers, but so sensitive was the House about land (knowing too well by what sort of title much of it was held), that the return to the poor man of what was once his own was represented as taking from the rich man a part of that which was his by right. The rejection of Mr Pryme's proposal was a fitting prelude to the New Poor Law.
About 618,000 acres had been enclosed under the Act of 1845, when, in 1869, Mr Fawcett arrested the movement towards enclosure, and inaugurated a movement towards the preservation of open spaces for health and recreation. Next came the Commons Act of 1876, passed by a Conservative Government. Without repealing the Act of 1845, the Act of 1876 laid down new principles; and in 1889 the "Land Commissions" were merged in a "Board of Agriculture," represented in the House of Commons by a responsible Minister.[1] In 1870, the Enclosure Commissioners had estimated that more than one-third of the land enclosed since 1845 was common field or pasture (distinguished from common). The Act must therefore have caused the extinction of many small holdings. The proportion of common field enclosed under earlier Acts was probably much greater, and very little now remains; but up to 1900, in the two manors of Stratton and Grimstone, near Dorchester, the common field system survived. The two sorts of enclosure, common and common field, have the closest relation to each other. When commons are enclosed, small holdings soon disappear.
There are two theories about the origin of commons. One is that they are the survival of the division of the conquered British lands, made by the victorious Saxons. As common-right has had, from the first we know of it, every appearance of remote antiquity, I incline to this view. The other is that they are only "the waste of the Manor"—the land which the lord allowed his villeins to use "in commonage" for pasture. In either case, they evidently represent very ancient rights, for the Statutes of Merton and of Westminster the Second (1246 and 1285) both stipulate that if the lord encloses any part of the
- ↑ Board of Agriculture Act, 1889.
