Cobbett's Legacy to labourers Author:William Cobbett Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LETTER II. WHAT RIGHT HAVE ENGLISH LANDLORDS TO THEIR LANDS ? HOW CAME THEY IN POSSESSION OF THEM ? OP WHAT NATURE IS THEIR TftLE? My Friekbs, To descri... more »be, andj indeed, to discover the real origin of the property, in almost any particular estate or t'arm in England, is next to aa impossibility. Indeed, it is quite impossible even to guess at who first broke up a farm, and subdued it, atid cultivated it. But, there is another origin of private property, besides that spoken of in Letter I; namely, the orf- gin, or right, or power, of Conquest! The lands of England, long after civil society had existed in the country, were conquered; and were actually taken possession of by the conqueror, as being all his own lands; and were either given away by him, or sold by him, to certain persons already in trie country, or to foreigners who came over with him from Normandy. Hence he became the sole proprietor of all the lands in the kingdom of England and Wales ; and his successors in the throne, or in the government of the commonwealth, have claimed the ownership throughout England and Wales, and also throughout the other parts of their dominions. The tenures, as the lawyers call them, and as we express it in the English word, the Holdings, were various, and are various unto this day ; but, without any exception whatsoever, no man who calls himself a landowner, is a landowner; but is merely a holder of lands under the king, as chief of the commonwealth. And, though this seems strange, it must always have been so in all communities, in substance, if not in form ; and it was so in England during the time that the government was a republic or commonwealth. To enable you better to understand this matter, let me relate to you, that, when the Norman conqueror made a distribution of th...« less