THE VILLAGE LABOURER, 1760-1832.* Maws histories have been written of
the governing class that. ruled England at the close of the eighteenth and the begin- ning of the nineteenth centuries. These have shown how "that class conducted war, how it governed its colonies, how- it behaved to the Continental Powers, how it managed the, first critical chapters of our relations with India, how it treated Ireland, how it developed the Parliamentary system,. how it saved Europe from Napoleon. . . . The writers of this book have here attempted to describe the life of the poor. during this period." The subject was too large for a single- volume, so, as they tell us in the Preface, they have confined themselves to the treatment of the village poor, leaving the town poor for a separate work.
The promise of the Preface has been carried out in some 400 pages, which show in every line great industry and research. The story is told with much literary skill and with. some epigrammatic felicity of style for which the student or these melancholy episodes of privation and injustice will be duly grateful. The book is certainly very readable.
The period was one of great suffering for the poorer classes. For this the reasons are various, remote, and, to a certain extent, inevitable. The authors, we venture to think, dwelt too exclusively on the occasions rather than on the true causes of events. In times of pressure, brought about either by the folly of Governments, the breaking-up of primitive institu- tions, bad seasons, and the niggardliness of nature, it is ins evitably the poor who suffer most. To bring a railing accusation * The Village Labourer, 1700-14V: a Study in the Government of England before the Reform. iU, ,By J. L. Ilauunond and. Barbara Jiammoad. London; Lougmaue and Co. [Si. net.]
:against the richer classes because in the perennial struggle for existence they fare better is not, we submit, a philosophical -way of treating history. Human nature in all ages is pretty ariuch the same. If, unfortunately, a Government finds itself involved in a series of costly wars, or if it undertakes to spend the people's money in philanthropy, there must be &shrinkage in the industrial enterprise of the nation, and the burden, -whether in the shape of want of employment or increased cost
-of living, falls most heavily on the poorer classes. The break- ing up of an ancient institution like the old common-field .system of cultivation—one of the principal topics discussed in -this volume—was bound to produce occasional hardship, and the burden was inevitably felt most acutely by those who lived 3learest to the Verge of destitution. The penal code of the ;period under consideration was barbarous, and suppression of ;revolt involved a degree of cruelty by which modern sentiment is naturally shocked. The whole situation, however, was con- trolled by circumstances for which no class had exclusive responsibility. Society was, then as ever, in a stage of transi- tion, and it was hound to work out results proportionate to the -degree of force that was at the disposal of the several classes.
Take, for instance, this question of enclosures. The com- anoners were by no means coextensive with the villagers. They were frequently a close and exclusive body, with definite sa,scertainable rights, and, 'according to the ideas of the time, it was not open to those responsible for the reconstruction to ,establish a system of peasant proprietorship on a. great scale. A large number of the inhabitants were not commoners and /tad no rights in respect of the land at all, and the interest of anany was quite infinitesimal.
The interesting and important thing about enclosures is -that they put an end to a system which was an intolerable nuisance and a serious restraint on the advancement of :agriculture. This is the well-nigh unanimous verdict of -economists and of writers on agriculture like Arthur Young and though they chronicle many pathetic incidents of hard- :ship we do not think that the authors of this book seriously ancan to dispute the inevitableness of the event.
The movement in favour of enclosure seems to us to be an instance of the unconscious but ineradicable abhorrence which -civilized society has for anything in the nature of common property. Political revolutions derive their motive from a 'desire to obtain a social and economic rather than a political reconstruction of society. Yet even the French Revolution, -unless we except the futile and rather ridiculous conspiracy -of Gremlins Bitheuf, never seriously attempted a departure Irons the so-called capitalistic order of industry. The truth is that, relatively to the poor, an exiguous though defined right of ownership in a common stock, inadequate to giving its possessor an opportunity for earning a decent living, was a restraint on the better distribution and mobility of labour. This rand the impolicy of the old system of settlement and parish relief lad converted the parish into a prison in which the poor man's -energy was confined. The same objection seems to us to apply to the remedy of the minimum, wage, which was then proposed and which the authors regard with favour. We are 'convinced that in the long run every attempt to deprive the labourer of the guidance of the free market is bound to end in disappointment. Low wages are a storm signal warning -men from certain trades, while high wages are invitations to -enter a profitable market. This is the motive force which is responsible for every upward movement of wages. It is not to the labourer's interest that the repelling and attracting influence a.fluctuating market should be concealed from him by such a 'device at minimum-wage legislation. When enclosure was -carried out—with, it may be admitted, much appearance of • injustice—the superfluous labour was attracted away from the
primitive reservoir of agricultural pursuits into employments -which offered better remuneration, and this was a necessary step to repair the evils of immobility which the old common- rfield system and the poor law had fastened on the poor. The processes of nature are cruel. If the system of protection so .sympathetically advocated by the authors had been adopted we :should not have been the great industrial nation that we are to-day, and in any case we cannot go back. The opportunity, if -opportunity it was, for establishing a peasant proprietary was lost. The necessity of introducing the magic, of property into the lives of the poor still remains. 'This is now a great manufacturing country, and it is not a mere question of establishing a peasant proprietary, but of establishing a form of wages contract such as will enable the working class to acquire some share in the industrial capital of the country. This, it seems to us, is the sole remedy for the evils of present proletariat conditions og life. This is not to be accomplished by any form of collectivism, but by a wider distribution of property on thetenures that have already been accepted by the consent of the civilized world.
The relevance of our criticism is that in this otherwise admirable bit of work we notice in the authors an occasional disposition to stray into a partisan attack on the established economic order. We do not think that the evidence put before us warrants such conclusions.
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