But just imagine a Dorsetshire peasant sending his
boy to a University!"
We suppose that the large holdings of land are the effect of
wrongs and abuses now wholly in the past, and that the causes for
their increase are no longer operative, but are something like
those geological laws by which the strata under them formed
themselves. Once, however, in driving through the most beautiful
part of England, which I will not specify because every part of
England is the most beautiful, I came upon an illustration of the
reverse, as signal as the spectacle of a landslide. It was the
accumulation, not merely within men's memories, but within the
actual generation, of vast bodies of land in the hold of a great
nobleman who had contrived a title in them by the simple device
of enclosing the people's commons. It was a wrong, but there was
no one of the wronged who was brave enough or rich enough to
dispute it through the broken law, and no witness public-spirited
enough to come to their aid. Such things make us think patiently,
almost proudly, of our national foible of graft, which may really
be of feudal origin.
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