Note 24 — Chapter II · THE VILLAGE BEFORE ENCLOSURE
Reading edition
Report on Somerset, reprinted 1797, p. 52; compare Report on Commons in Brecknock, Annals of Agriculture, vol. xxii. p. 632, where commons are denounced as ‘hurtful to society by holding forth a temptation to idleness, that fell parent to vice and immorality’; also compare Ibid., vol. xx. p. 145, where they are said to encourage the commoners to be ‘hedge breakers, pilferers, nightly trespassers ... poultry and rabbit stealers, or such like.’