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in the county of Somerset, and Wisley, in the county of Surrey, should be omitted from the general Act of that session, and not without good cause. They state in their report that the assistant commissioner in the Withypool inclosure had only set apart one acre out of 1,904 for recreation, giving as reason for this that a larger amount could not be used, because the population never resort to the common for recreation and exercise, because there are other commons where the children and grown-up persons can rove about, and because the ground is steep.' On the other hand the parish clerk and the schoolmaster testified that the common was the general resort of the inhabitants for exercise, for games, and for the meetings of their friendly societies, that there was no other common within five or six miles to which the public were allowed free access, and that one acre was not sufficient either for the children or the adults. Five acres of land, we should remark, had been assigned for garden allotments for the labouring poor. With respect to Wisley Common, the assistant commissioner had assigned two acres for recreation ground, but none for garden allotments; the Committee on the Metropolitan Inclosure Act, to which this measure was referred, unanimously decided that six acres should be reserved for recreation, and ten for garden allotments. These two instances are sufficient to prove how slight an amount of benefit the public and the labouring poor have derived from the clauses of the Act of 1845, framed for the protection of their interests.

The Select Committee of 1869 were led by these considerations to propose various amendments to the General Inclosure Act, all of which would, if adopted, prove beneficial to the inhabitants and labouring poor in the neighbourhood of commons selected for inclosure, though

they have no tendency to check the progress of inclosure. Mr. Bruce has this session introduced a Bill into the House of Commons carrying into effect most of these recommendations. But this Bill merely requires that a tenth part of the common to be inclosed shall be set apart for the public use, and for allotments for the poor; while the portion so set apart is in no case (however large the common be) to exceed fifty acres. This is the strongest assertion of the rights of the nation over commons that has so far been authoritatively made. Yet we trust that this Bill may not be adopted; for if there be any force in the arguments we have been urging, the nation ought not to be satisfied with any measure that does not leave it in possession of the whole of the waste land still remaining uninclosed. Its right to insist upon this (making due compensation to all who are interested in the same) is as clear as the benefit that would result from the transaction is certain. With our rapidly increasing population it is absolutely necessary to prohibit the inclosure of open spaces that can promote the health and rational enjoyments of the inhabitants of our large towns, who in their close and crowded dwellings have so slight an enjoyment of those blessings that seem almost the inalienable rights of the human race to breathe the pure air of heaven, and walk over the grass and flowers of the field, that without any aid from man clothe the earth with beauty. And still more important is it that we should as a nation make some strenuous effort to elevate the social condition of that large portion of our people from whom the whole body of our manual labourers is recruited. We know of no measure more calculated to supply the stimulating influence of hope to a class of men whose lot it now is, that they are destitute

of any prospect of bettering their condition in this world-who have nothing to look forward to, after a life of painful drudgery, but a pauper's grave-than the establishment in different parts of the country of small holdings, let on a secure tenure, which would naturally become the rewards of the most provident of the agricultural labourers. Holdings of this character would certainly be instituted if any considerable portion of the common land of the country should be taken possession of by the State, in the manner we are now advocating. And, as they would merely be let upon leases of moderate duration, no permanent injury could arise from their failure; while immediate good would result from their success. A more extended experiment than has yet been made of the system of agricultural co-operation should also be attempted on a part of the lands to be thus acquired by the nation. Those who have read the Bishop of Manchester's account of the two agricultural co-operative

associations at Assington in Suffolk, successfully conducted by ordinary agricultural labourers, with no extraneous assistance (beyond in each case a loan from the landlord, which has already been completely paid off), will agree that the success of that experiment opens the most hopeful prospect to be met with in all that concerns the welfare of those who cultivate our soil. Dr. Fraser says, with express reference to Assington, 'If there are many things to make a patriotic mind sad, as it contemplates the social condition of England, there are others of a more cheering character sufficient to encourage effort, and to prevent either the statesman or the philanthropist from yielding to despair. One such thing is the action of the co-operative principle, especially in its elevating effect upon the condition of the sons and daughters of toil.' To this we may add, that in no sphere of industry does co-operation seem likely to meet with earlier or greater success than in agriculture.

First Report of the Commissioners on the Employment of Women and Children in Agriculture. Rev. J. Fraser's Report, p. 46.

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VILLAGE COMMUNITIES IN THE EAST AND WEST.'

WITH

ITH rare exceptions, books about India have hitherto been of two kinds. They have been extravagant and unreal, or else profoundly technical and alarmingly matter-of-fact. Indian tales and novels have been produced by writers who knew nothing about the country, and who fell into errors and pitfalls which a subaltern would have avoided after a residence of six weeks; or they have come from the pen of old residents, who have taken pains to distort and exaggerate the ordinary social features of life in the East. In such stories there is often a boar-hunt, or an expedition after tigers which rivals the impossibilities of a run with the Blazers, as formerly described by Mr. Lever; officers, civil and military, talk slang, which it would require a philologist to interpret; and the administration of the country is carried on by individuals who are knaves or fools, and occasionally both. Even Oakfield, which was written by a son of Dr. Arnold, with earnestness, with something of a sound moral, and with fidelity of portraiture, was not exempt from caricature; and his Indian connections and early familiarity with Bengal did not keep Thackeray from blunders in his first, and as some think, his greatest work. Joseph Sedley is a fiction. But there have been, and still are, Indian officials who resemble closely Colonel Newcome and Mr. Binnie. Perhaps the best Indian story which has been turned to account by a writer of fiction is that which forms the groundwork of The Surgeon's Daughter, by Scott. The northern magician was intimate with a score of Border families who had representatives in the East; and, with

the instinct of genius, he seized on the salient points of a narrative told him by a friend, and gave them to the public in colours brilliant, and even dazzling, but such as might have been observed at Madras and Mysore. Hyder Ali, it is true, talks rather above his imperfect education, and reminds us more of the Saladin of the Desert when seated opposite Sir Kenneth, than of the grandson of a Lahore trooper. But the able ruler of Seringa patam, and his less capable son, in the novel, bear a greater resemblance to the real Hyder and the real Tippoo, than many of the so-called historical characters do to their prototypes; while the Amazonian Mrs. Montreville, Hartley the surgeon, Hillary the crimp, and Richard Middlemas the apostate and traitor, are excellent representatives of individuals who sought their fortunes in the East somewhere about the latter half of the eighteenth century, and also imparted to Indian society a character, in English estimation, of which it retains the impress to this very hour.

We except from the ruck of trashy novels and sensational chronicles the early productions of Sir John Kaye, who, before he took to writing history, gave to the Indian world some stories in which the facts were accurately given, and artistically grouped; where the officers were gentlemen, and the ladies were neither Begums nor half-castes. But, as we have said, there exists another, and a widely different set of compositions. Year after year every Indian government becomes the depository of a vast accumulation of precious official knowledge. province lapses, or is temporarily annexed, or a revenue settlement

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Village Communities in the East and West. Six Lectures delivered at Oxford. By Henry Sumner Maine.

has to be framed or revised. The language, manners, and customs of some aboriginal or hill tribe, widely differing from the Aryan conquerors, have to be investigated; revelations of a particular caste, the members of which have for generations lived by thieving and robbery, strike the administrator with amazement, and the philanthropist with despair: ruins are explored in the midst of unhealthy jungles, which attest the splendour and strength of past dynasties, and the capacity of Rajas and Nawabs whose names have all but perished: or, in short, some historical scrap or political fragment tossed up on the stream of time, is noted, discussed, and reported by intelligent officials, who somehow find leisure for something beyond the iniquities of the police, the collection of a local cess, or the desperate rivalry of two villages regarding a watercourse and a boundary line. Probably there is no government in the world whose archives contain such a mass of curious, accurate, and diversified information regarding the habits of the people, as the Government of India. And yet, either from the nature of the subject, or the fashion in which it is handled, this treasury is absolutely closed to the general reader. Not to speak of typographical blunders, and paper mouldy and unpleasant with the ancient and fish-like smell of an Oriental bazaar, the pages of Indian reports are loaded with scraps which the writers have apparently stolen from some feast of languages. Occasionally, native terms are translated by phrases which either convey a wrong impression, or else render the subject more abstruse and obscure. The amateur, lost in a maze of land tenures, perplexed with Sanskrit or Arabic terms, and confused by the hard names of strange tribes, by the mongrel terminology of Eastern localities in which Hindu and

Mohammedan meet, by new methods of computing eras and distances, and by new ways of introducing old friends, confesses himself fairly beaten, and is driven off the field. Yet it is certain that in these Blue Books there are details of crime which would fill a three-volume novel, accounts of fauna and flora which would delight a sportsman or naturalist, and folk-lore which would give animation to a wearied antiquary, and perhaps throw light, by comparison and analogy, on some vexed question in the early chronicles of the Anglo-Saxon or the Teutonic race.

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It may readily be apprehended that Sir H. Maine has not given to the world the result of his experience in the shape of an Indian Lothair. Nor, on the other hand, has the late Law Member of the Viceregal Council produced a bulky dissertation on Indian land tenures and law terms. One of Mr. Helps's favourite characters is constantly reminding the intelligent circle at Worth-Ashton that he knows a trifle or two about Contingent Remainders.' Sir H. Maine has prudently refrained from favouring his hearers and readers with an elaborate exposition of Puttidari tenures, or with a luminous essay on the reasons why the State should uphold Puttuni Talooks. Such topics may well be left to the Indian Administrator or to the present Committee of the House of Commons. What, then, the author has done, and done well, is to 'point out the importance of increased attention to the phenomena of usage and legal thought which are observable in the East.' Retired civil servants, who have faithfully served the Company and the Crown, may possibly ask how a man, who has never conversed familiarly with knots of villagers under the shade of the mango or the tamarind trees, or studied the rotation of crops and the difficulties of irrigation, or

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