I have to fall back therefore on metaphysical fancies of my own; and I
continue to believe that the anger of the English poor (to steal a phrase
from Sir Thomas Browne) came from something in man that is other than the
elements and that owes no homage unto the sun.
When comfortable people come to talking stuff of that sort, it is really
time that the comfortable classes made a short summary and confession of
what they have really done with the very poor Englishman. The dawn of the
mediaeval civilisation found him a serf; which is a different thing from a
slave. He had security; although the man belonged to the land rather than
the land to the man. He could not be evicted; his rent could not be
raised. In practice, it came to something like this: that if the lord
rode down his cabbages he had not much chance of redress; but he had the
chance of growing more cabbages. He had direct access to the means of
production.
Since then the centuries in England have achieved something different; and
something which, fortunately, is perfectly easy to state. There is no
doubt about what we have done. We have kept the inequality, but we have
destroyed the security. The man is not tied to the land, as in serfdom;
nor is the land tied to the man, as in a peasantry.
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