Changing the common into private- first time round.

YES FOLKS! The rich did it before. This was one poets reaction from the 18th Century...

The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from off the goose.

The law demands that we atone
When we take things we do not own
But leaves the lords and ladies fine
Who take things that are yours and mine.

The poor and wretched don't escape
If they conspire the law to break;
This must be so but they endure
Those who conspire to make the law.

The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
And geese will still a common lack
Till they go and steal it back.

Anonymous

THE FIRST ENCLOSURE MOVEMENT

This poem is one of the pithiest condemnations of the English enclosure movement, the process of fencing off common land and turning it into private property.In a few lines, the poem manages to criticize double standards, expose the artificial and controversial nature of property rights, and take a slap at the legitimacy of state power. And it does this all with humor, without jargon, and in rhyming couplets. Academics (including this one) should take note. Like most of the criticisms of the enclosure movement, the poem depicts a world of rapacious, state-aided "privatization," a conversion into private property of something that had formerly been common property or, perhaps, had been outside of the property system altogether.

From: http://www.law.duke.edu/shell/cite.pl?66+Law+&+Contemp.+Probs.+33+(WinterSpring+2003)

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