They were tillers of the soil, rent-payers who could be removed at
the will of another. They were not even freeholders, and had no
political power--no voice in the affairs of the nation. The
landlords in Parliament gave themselves, individually by law, all
the powers which a tenant gave them by contract, while they had no
corresponding liability, and, therefore, it was their interest to
refrain from giving leases, and to make their tenantry as dependent
on them as if they were mere serfs. This law was especially
unfortunate, and had a positive and very great effect upon the
condition of the farming class and upon the nation, and people came
to think that landlords could do as they liked with their land, and
that the tenants must be creeping, humble, and servile.

An effort to remedy this evil was made in 1832, when the occupiers,
if rented or rated at the small amount named, became voters. This
gave the power to the holding, not to the man, and the landlord
could by simple eviction deprive the man of his vote; hence the
tenants-at-will were driven to the hustings like sheep--they could
not, and dare not, refuse to vote as the landlord ordered.

The lords of the manor, with a landlord Parliament, asserted their
claims to the commonages, and these lands belonging to the people,
were gradually inclosed, and became the possession of individuals.
The inclosing of commonages commenced in the reign of Queen Anne,
and was continued in the reigns of all the sovereigns of the House
of Hanover. The first inclosure act was passed in 1709; in the
following thirty years the average number of inclosure bills was
about three each year; in the following fifty years there were
nearly forty each year; and in the forty years of the nineteenth
century it was nearly fifty per annum.