lasting as that which followed the insurrection of 1381, or as did
actually occur in Ireland, had it not been for an unparalleled
contemporaneous territorial and industrial expansion. Thorold Rogers
always insisted that between 1563, the year of the passage of the Statute
of Apprentices, [Footnote: 5 Eliz. c. 4.] and 1824, a regular conspiracy
existed between the lawyers "and the parties interested in its success ...
to cheat the English workman of his wages, ... and to degrade him to
irremediable poverty." [Footnote: _Work and Wages_, 398.] Certainly
the land monopolists resorted to strong measures to accumulate land, for
something like six hundred and fifty Enclosure Acts were passed between
1760, the opening of the Industrial Revolution, and 1774, the outbreak of
the American War. But without insisting on Rogers's view, it is not denied
that the weakest of the small yeomen sank into utter misery, becoming
paupers or worse. On the other hand, of those stronger some emigrated to
America, others, who were among the ablest and the boldest, sought fortune
as adventurers over the whole earth, and, like the grandfather of Chatham,
brought home from India as smugglers or even as pirates, diamonds to be
sold to kings for their crowns, or, like Clive, became the greatest
generals and administrators of the nation. Probably, however, by far the
majority of those who were of average capacity found compensation for the
confiscated commons in domestic industry, owning their houses with lots of
land and the tools of their trade. Defoe has left a charming description
of the region about Halifax in Yorkshire, toward the year 1730, where he
found the whole population busy, prosperous, healthy, and, in the main,
self-sufficing. He did not see a beggar or an idle person in the whole
country. So, favored by circumstances, the landed oligarchy met with no
effective resistance after the death of Cromwell, and achieved what
amounted to being autocratic power in 1688. Their great triumph was the
conversion of the House of Commons into their own personal property, about
the beginning of the eighteenth century, with all the guaranties of law.