made richer in proportion to their riches, while the poor are made poorer in proportion to their poverty. Indeed, in some places it has been observed that enclosure has been succeeded by a decrease rather than an increase of the population. The Inclosure Commissioners are imbued so strongly with the legal notion of the freeholders being the only persons interested in these manorial wastes that they forget the public have a larger right and a deeper interest in the matter. They proposed to enclose a Surrey common lately extending over 380 acres, only reserving two acres for the public, and nothing for the poor!
If vested interest and the force of custom is to rule in this question, then I say none can show a better title to the possession of these commons than the poor cottagers. But vested interest or a dead system cannot be allowed to rule in a question of such vital importance to the vast majority of English families. If they are, then we may anticipate for the English race a degeneracy similar to that observed in the cattle and sheep which pasture on these commons, and future historians will describe our unhappy posterity in similar language to that which I have quoted from the author of "The Rural Economy of Surrey." "These people," he will say, "are probably of the ancient stock, but they are in general small and ill-formed, having been starved into their present state."
