Common Land Quotes
Commenting on the status of the Cherokee Indians.
The Diggers were a religious-economic movement that even today would be considered very radical. They advocated the right of the poor to go onto public lands and farm them—thus the name “Diggers.” Beyond their opposition to the private ownership of land to the exclusion of the poor, Winstanley and the Diggers promulgated another very modern doctrine: That the poor should take the responsibility and have the right to determinine how the society should provide for the poor. A version of this became one of the Mottos of the Poverty Program of 1964. See {616966}.
The notion that public lands should be available for the grazing of private herds of animals is very old. Note that the Roman law expressly forbade the collection of fees for grazing rights. The reasoning was that virtually all free Romans had animals that needed grazing and pasture land. So all citizens could take advantage of the public facility. As society became more industrialized and specialized, the percentage of citizens who could benefit reduced over time until there became less than 1 percent of citizens who could benefit from a asset that was paid for and maintained by all citizens. Then there was a rationale for charging user fees.
