[i]
THE VILLAGE LABOURER
1760–1832
[iii]
THE VILLAGE LABOURER
1760–1832
A Study in the Government of England
before the Reform Bill
BY
J. L. HAMMOND AND BARBARA HAMMOND
... The men who pay wages ought not to be the politicalmasters of those who earn them (because laws should beadapted to those who have the heaviest stake in thecountry, for whom misgovernment means not mortifiedpride or stinted luxury, but want and pain, and degradationand risk to their own lives and to their children’s souls)....
Lord Acton.
SECOND IMPRESSION
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA
1912
[v]
TO
GILBERT AND MARY MURRAY
[vii]
PREFACE
Many histories have been written of the governing class thatruled England with such absolute power during the last centuryof the old régime. Those histories have shown how that classconducted war, how it governed its colonies, how it behavedto the continental Powers, how it managed the first criticalchapters of our relations with India, how it treated Ireland,how it developed the Parliamentary system, how it savedEurope from Napoleon. One history has only been sketchedin outline: it is the history of the way in which this classgoverned England. The writers of this book have here attemptedto describe the life of the poor during this period.It is their object to show what was in fact happening to theworking classes under a government in which they had noshare. They found, on searching through the material for sucha study, that the subject was too large for a single book; theyhave accordingly confined themselves in this volume to thetreatment of the village poor, leaving the town worker forseparate treatment. It is necessary to mention this, for ithelps to explain certain omissions that may strike the reader.The growth and direction of economic opinion, for example,are an important part of any examination of this question,but the writers have been obliged to reserve the considerationof that subject for their later volume, to which it seems moreappropriate. The writers have also found it necessary toleave entirely on one side for the present the movement forParliamentary Reform which was alive throughout this period,and very active, of course, during its later stages.
Two subjects are discussed fully in this volume, they believe,for the first time. One is the actual method and procedure ofParliamentary Enclosure; the other the labourers’ rising of1830. More than one important book has been written on[viii]enclosures during the last few years, but nowhere can thestudent find a full analysis of the procedure and stages bywhich the old village was destroyed. The rising of 1830 hasonly been mentioned incidentally in general histories: it hasnowhere been treated as a definite demand for better conditions,and its course, scope, significance, and punishmenthave received little attention. The writers of this book havetreated it fully, using for that purpose the Home Of