12. See R. H. Tawney, The Agrarian Problem in 16th Century England (New York: Burt Franklin Publishers, 1959, originally 1912) and Paul Mantoux, The Industrial Revolution in the Eighteenth Century (London: Cape, 1928) for a full explanation of the process of “enclosures.” The “bold peasantry...” is from the epic poem of Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774), “The Deserted Village,” set in England (though the poet was Irish). The stanza from which the line in the text was borrowed is worth printing in full:

Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay:
Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade;
A breath can make them, as a breath has made;
But a bold peasantry, their country’s pride,
When once destroyed, can never be supplied.

What happened then and there has continued to numberless people in both core and periphery, and it accelerates in one tidal wave after another, each more destructive and irreparable than its predecessor – most tragically in the past and still today in the periphery and in the swelling numbers of unemployed and underemployed in the core countries, as the latter “deindustrialize.” As the nineteenth century began, Bentham was advocating workhouses (and the separation of children and parents). Without knowing it, former House speaker Gingrich and his allies followed an ancient tradition.