But we have short memories, do we not?
No sooner has the world recovered from the last paroxism than we move on to the next one.
The clearances and the enclosures were where the people working the land could no longer sustain themselves under current conditions. And the incentives provided by the state of the time were to encourage the people to move into industrialised cities. Where they would be always paid just enough and if not could remain alive, just, on welfare.
No longer freemen. How things have not changed.
Open Borders Immigration is Today's Form of Highland Enclosures and Lowland Clearances
The workers would continue their work there in the new city, now, under the kosh. Whereas before, though not wealthy, they were almost entirely independent and autonomous - they could easily provide all the food and shelter and a little extra for the whole family. Security. Nobody went without. No one had a master.
Until the land was fully privatised, rents increased and the ugly spectre of taxation emerged to grasp their necks.
In the city the prospects there were better than on the land, in spite of still being poor and having lost their freedom. They would not die of starvation related diseases in the city as they would have done if they had remained on the plains and the hills, where once they were their own masters and used to laugh at the Lord with all his fancy ways.
So what of today, in this modern civilised world we're so proud of? Plus ca change... Of course. Why would the effects be any different, if the causes are identical?
Today, we live in a globalised world. Love it or hate it, it is globalised. There is nothing and nobody we do not understand anymore technically. There is One economy. It is the global one. There is no longer any free land to run to, to escape the Lord, to take your chances and make your own way.
There is no free land to run to any more. Yes, maybe in space there is free land. And how long will it be before we forget how to remember the future there too? Not long if history is anything to go by.
So we have entire nations today, which played the part of a city in the last century. And we have other entire nations representing 'the highlands' and entire nations representing 'the lowlands'. And the workers of these new highlands and lowlands are presently making their way into the new 'city', which we used to call an entire country.
It is very easy today to be critical of immigration and immigrants. It is not racism as is commonly misunderstood. Are the immigrants today not the same workers who could no longer survive in the highlands and lowlands of old England and Scotland? The rent. The tax. The Lord.
No. Once again, it is to the city we shall go.