27 APRIL 1839, Page 13

THE ENCLOSURE BILL AMENDMENT.

Mn. IlinvEv, who, despite the eccentricities which occasionally impair his usefulness, is continually deserving well of the public, moved on Tuesday last a resolution to rescind the Standing Or- der on Enclosure Bills which relates to the allotment of lands for public use, and substituting one which he deemed better calculated to work efficiently to the same end. The principle of the new Order, which has been agreed to, is one of proportion : it is pro- posed that the quantity of set aside for the use and pleasure of the people shall bear a certain reference to the quantity enclosed. Such at least is the design, as explained by the mover of the reso- lution, though the terms in which the resolution is expressed do not appear to fulfil it very clearly. It is provided " that the Com- mittee on the bill have before them the number of acres proposed to be enclosed, as also of the population in the parishes or places in which the land to be enclosed is sittthte ;" but there is no express injunction that this information shall be made the basis of an equit- able apportionment. It might be inconvenient to lay down a certain rule of proportion for all cases, but the principle of proportion, which is that announced as the object of this resolution, should have been at least distinctly propounded. Mr. lhavEy seems fully sensible of the disposition of the Committee to evade the objects of the clause, but still leaves them loopholes for further evasion. "The whole of the Committee were composed of gentlemen more or less interested in the matter before them ; " and therefore "it was not to be wondered at" that the Standing Order had been "found inadequate to effect the laud- able purposes for which it had been adopted,"—in other words, that the interests of the poor, which the Order sought to provide for, had been, as usual, effectually quashed. We agree with Mr. HARVEY in "not wondering" at these or at any other treacherous doublings of a Committee of the People's Representatives. As long as landed gentlemen meet together to make speeches for the

people , and laws for themselves, and the Legislature consists of those who are not only the " fruges consumere nati," but who claim to be at the same time the "fruges rendere nati," so long nothing which is unpopular can appear unnatural that is done in the name of legislation ; so long our political motto will be the " nil admi- rari" of Mr. IhsvEy. It appears that out of 17,000 acres to be

enclosed, in one instance, the proportion it has been thought fair to allot to the poor is fire acres. Out of 15,000, in another in-

stance, three is the public gain. In some enclosure bills now pass- ing through Parliament, the quantity of land to be enclosed is not named at all, and yet the allotment to the poor is stated at one low fixed amount ; in others, large quantities are named for enclosure, with handsome provision for the parson and the lord of the manor, while the poor, in spite of Standing Orders, come in for no share

whatever. In this disregard for the health and welfare of the help-

less classes, as well as for the professed wishes of Parliament, there may be nothing to excite wonder ; but will Mr. HauvEy's resolu- tion render the tender mercies of the landed gentleman much more wonderful, or less common, in future ? We cannot perceive that it will have this effect, and fear that the means will be found still insufficient to the end.

Our hope is to see the public becoming more and more alive to the importance of the benefits which Mr. Ihnvsy's resolution is designed to secure. It is the curse of the overworked, bread-taxed peasantry of this country, that the acquisition of the means of their existence is alone a life-consuming toil, seldom leaving them a moment to bestow upon objects of pleasure or of health. No country can challenge the honours of a well-ordered state whose peasantry are not in a condition to devote a certain portion of their time to pleasure and amusement ; but for a country where health itself is a luxury and exercise a taxed article—where " the poor" are so poor, the "labouring classes" so labouring, that the very scheme of their life has no provision in it for fresh air or sunshine— all that can be said is, that it is in the last and lowest and most disgraceful state to which a country can be brought by misrule. Riches testify in vain to the character of such a country—they but deepen the dishonour of her dominant classes. It is not necessary to go to Owenism to know that the business of a country can be transacted without dooming one portion of its inhabitants to a life- long slavery. If we remember, it is one of the calculations of the benevolent enthusiast of New Lanark, that if every man worked two hours a day, the business of the world would be done, and all the rest of the day remain for pleasure and improvement. This is "Utopian," of course ; and the absurdity of the idea of only work- ing two hours a day, we have always observed to be peculiarly ob- vious and diverting to those who never work at all. If they think an honest man should be ashamed to do so little towards the world's work, let them (it might be said) ease their conscience, and do more. But the rich, with their lively sense of the absurdities of Utopian schemes, should remember that though Utopia may be a very remote country, there are various intermediate countries in that direction, of all degrees of relative distance, and that in pro- portion as they are invited to go shorter stages, the invitation may become less humorous and more importunate. To jump at once from a state of affairs in which, while ten thousand times more pudding than it knows how to eat is put into the mouth of one class—that picks its teeth in return, another class toils its four- teen hours a day—and starves, to a state in which all might come by their due, neither more nor less,—this jump, we say, may be a jump the very idea of which is fit to throw the tooth- pick class into convulsions of laughter : it is no doubt such a jump as none but the veriest political SAM PATCH would so much as conceive the thought of taking. We grant the impossibility of such justice (poetical justice, if you will) being ever done on the Toothpickians ; but we pray theta to remember that gentler jumps may be proposed—jumps which they may find themselves not only able but necessitated to take. That all may come by their desert, we are instructed by SnAssrean not to desire—and the Tooth- pickians are doubtless hugely Shaksperian in their view of this matter of polity ; but we would entreat them to look forward to Utopia Minor as a country not to be laughed at—a country by no means fabulous. And if the Toothpickians ask us what we conceive by Utopia Minor, we make answer, that we conceive it to be a state which may present the phxnomena of labour without starvation and wealth without the overgorged insolence of power,—a fearful and a long step, certainly, from things as they are, and no doubt to be taken at the latest possible moment, with the utmost possible uproar and resistance—but still, one that time threatens withal, and therefore to be gently named with permission of the Toothpickians. In Utopia Minor, if we divine rightly, neither will the poor be packed in towns as thick as wretches in a dungeon, for want of the gaol-delivery of free trade and colonization, nor factory children—

for the same reason—sink so early under deformity and exhaustion, nor their parents have but one alternative—to see them starve for food or perish in procuring it. Perhaps it will be possible for the

industrious classes, generally, to snatch an hour or two from the struggle for daily bread to look about them ; to inhale the common

air with lungs free from disease ; to mingle in healthful exercises and cheerful pastimes, such as once made the phrase "merry England" no solecism; to maintain the credit of their national strength and

manhood, and enhance the moral dignity of their order, by the moderation and content which proceed from a consciousness of a just position in the social scale and the possession of a fair portion of this world's blessings. So may it be—and hail Utopia Minor!