Legislation was terrified at this revolution. It did not
 yet stand on that height of civilization where the “wealth
 of the nation” (i.e., the formation of capital, and the
 reckless exploitation and impoverishing of the mass of the
 people) figure as the ultima Thule of all
 state-craft. In his history of Henry VII., Bacon says:
 “Inclosures at that time (1489) began to be more frequent,
 whereby arable land (which could not be manured without
 people and families) was turned into pasture, which was
 easily rid by a few herdsmen; and tenancies for years,
 lives, and at will (whereupon much of the yeomanry lived)
 were turned into demesnes. This bred a decay of people, and
 (by consequence) a decay of towns, churches, tithes, and the
 like... In remedying of this inconvenience the king’s
 wisdom was admirable, and the parliament’s at that time...
 they took a course to take away depopulating enclosures, and
 depopulating pasturage.” An Act of Henry VII., 1489, cap.
 19, forbad the destruction of all “houses of husbandry” to
 which at least 20 acres of land belonged. By an Act, 25
 Henry VIII., the same law was renewed. It recites, among
 other things, that many farms and large flocks of cattle,
 especially of sheep, are concentrated in the hands of a few
 men, whereby the rent of land has much risen and tillage has
 fallen off, churches and houses have been pulled down, and
 marvellous numbers of people have been deprived of the means
 wherewith to maintain themselves and their families.
 The Act, therefore, ordains
 the rebuilding of the decayed farmsteads, and fixes a
 proportion between corn land and pasture land, &c. An
 Act of 1533 recites that some owners possess 24,000 sheep,
 and limits the number to be owned to 2,000.
 [4] The cry of
 the people and the legislation directed, for 150 years after
 Henry VII., against the expropriation
 of 674the small farmers and peasants,
 were alike fruitless. The secret of their inefficiency
 Bacon, without knowing it, reveals to us. “The device of
 King Henry VII.,” says Bacon, in his “Essays, Civil and
 Moral,” Essay 29, “was profound and admirable, in making
 farms and houses of husbandry of a standard; that is,
 maintained with such a proportion of land unto them as may
 breed a subject to live in convenient plenty, and no servile
 condition, and to keep the plough in the hands of the owners
 and not mere hirelings.” [5] What the capitalist system
 demanded was, on the other hand, a degraded and almost
 servile condition of the mass of the people, the
 transformation of them into mercenaries, and of their means
 of labour into capital. During this transformation period,
 legislation also strove to retain the 4 acres of land by the
 cottage of the agricultural wage labourer, and forbad him to
 take lodgers into his cottage. In the reign of James I.,
 1627, Roger Crocker of Front Mill, was condemned for having
 built a cottage on the manor of Front Mill without 4 acres
 of land attached to the same in perpetuity. As late as
 Charles I.’s reign, 1638, a royal commission was appointed
 to enforce the carrying out of the old laws, especially that
 referring to the 4 acres of land. Even in
 Cromwell’s time, the building of a house within 4 miles of
 London was forbidden unless it was endowed with 4 acres of
 land. As late as the first half of the 18th century
 complaint is made if the cottage of the agricultural
 labourer has not an adjunct of one or two acres of land.
 Nowadays he is lucky if it is furnished with a little
 garden, or if he may rent, far away from his cottage, a few
 roods. “Landlords and farmers,” says Dr. Hunter, “work here
 hand in hand. A few acres to the cottage would make the
 labourers too independent.” [6]