568 PARLIAMENTARY COLBERTISM 
that people were too ready to give way to the building of 
cottages, « for the ease of your parish, or out of a base fear 
of your Lord. The Parish sometimes wants habitation for 
pags oA, their poor, and then with consent of the Lord there is a 
wastes new erection, and for which there are very few Lords, but 
contrary to Law do receive rent, so that he careth not how 
many are erected. Again, many times the Lord gives way 
to erect without consent, either of Free or Copyholder, and if 
such are presented yet very seldome redressed’.” There was 
soon reason to suspect, however, that this mode of dealing 
with the difficulty was a mere palliative, and that the practice 
in the long run fostered the evils of pauperism. Dymock 
propounds some searching questions on this subject; “whether 
Commons do not rather make poore by causing idlenesse, 
than maintaine them; and such poore who are trained up 
rather for the Gallowes or beggary, than for the Common- 
wealth’s service? How it cometh to passe that there are 
fewest poore where there are fewest Commons, as in Kent, 
where there is scarce six commons in a county of a con- 
siderable greatnesse??” The remedy he suggests is that of 
enclosing the commons and allotting a couple of acres, or so, 
to each of these families. Taylor is still more explicit; be 
would have tried to train these people to engage in spinning 
and manufacturing rather than that they (as usually now 
they do) “should be lazying upon a Common to attend 
one Cow and a few sheep for we seldom see any living on 
Commons set themselves to a better employment. And if 
the father do work sometimes, and so get bread, yet the 
A.D. 1689 
—1776. 
in 1654. Where the man could obtain four acres of ground there was no legal 
objection to the erection of a cottage, as he was supposed to have the means of 
supporting himself. A. Moore, Bread for the Poore (1653), p. 15. 
L Common Good, 38. 
3 Hartlib's Legacie, 54. Samuel Hartlib is sometimes credited with being 
the author of this work, as for example by Thorold Rogers, Agriculture and 
Prices. But his own Prefaces, as well as the Memoir by Dircks, make it clear that 
this is a mistake. Hartlib constituted himself into a sort of Society of Arts, and 
had a large correspondence with specialists in different departments. Of his own 
acquaintance with the subject of husbandry he observes: —* I cannot say much of 
mine own experience in this matter, yet Providence having directed me by the 
improvement of several relations with the experience and observations of others, 
[ find myself obliged to become a conduit pipe thereof towards the Publick.” 
(Dircks, Biographical Memoirs of Hartlib, p. 63.) Dircks attributes this tract to 
Dressy Dymock, p. 69.