[Gordis]

I am always somewhat baffled when people speak of hobbit innocence in a positive sense and lament its loss. Hobbits are NOT children. Adult persons living in a wide world have no call to be innocent. They have no right to be innocent.

Hobbit innocence was bought at a heavy price, and it were the Dunedain who paid the price: those who died at Fornost in 1974-75, in the Ettenmoors, all over old Arnor and finally at Sarn Ford in 3018. Aragorn paid for Hobbit innocence when he had lost his grandfather a year before he was born and his father when he was two, when he himself went to kill orcs and lost HIS innocence well before he was twenty.

But have a look at a fifty-year-old Hobbit, another dweller of Arnor:

‘I knew that danger lay ahead, of course; but I did not expect to meet it in our own Shire. Can’t a hobbit walk from the Water to the River in peace?’ exclaimed Frodo.
‘But it is not your own Shire,’ said Gildor. ‘Others dwelt here before hobbits were; and others will dwell here again when hobbits are no more. The wide world is all about you: you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot for ever fence it out.’

Gildor was quite right in rebuking Frodo. Such innocence borders on simplemindedness. And other Hobbits were even worse:

Frodo: There have been times when I thought the inhabitants too stupid and dull for words, and have felt that an earthquake or an invasion of dragons might be good for them.

The greenhouse conditions the Hobbits enjoyed for a very long time didn't make them any better, only worse. Why "greenhouse"? Look here, that was the beginning of the Shire:

TA 1601 Many Periannath migrate from Bree, and are granted land beyond Baranduin by Argeleb II (App.B). All that was demanded of them was that they should keep the Great Bridge in repair, and all other bridges and roads, speed the king's messengers, and acknowledge his lordship -LOTR.

Ahem, don't you feel that the King Argeleb had forgotten something? Like military duty or taxes? Yet the state is impossible without taxes, those who use the land and benefice from the protection of the state, HAVE to pay them.

You would counter that the hobbits had sent some archers to the last Angmar war. But read it again:

To the last battle at Fornost with the Witch-lord of Angmar they sent some bowmen to the aid of the king, or so they maintained, though no tales of Men record it. -LOTR prologue

"Some bowmen", "they maintained", "no record". The truth is that if there were indeed some hobbit archers in the battle, their impact was minimal. Nobody had noticed them, neither the friends, nor the Enemy.

Now in 3018 the greenhouse conditions had abruptly ended. The Rangers were either slaughtered at Sarn Ford, or went South to aid Aragorn. Only that made the invasion of the Shire by the ruffians possible. Were the Hobbits tougher people, less lazy, meek and fat, no ruffian would have dared to molest them, because they outnumbered the evil Men many times over. The occupation of the Shire was the Hobbits' own fault in the first place.

Originally Posted by The Might

Did the Scouring make Hobbits better? And mark the question, it's not did it make it better for the Hobbits, but made them better. I believe not. It took away their inocence, best example is the killing of Wormtongue. The exhausted and tormented Wormtongue kills his evil master and gets three arrows in his body in return from Hobbit archers before Frodo could intervene and stop them from killing him. Great way to end a war.

Ahh, Wormtongue… But it was the very hobbit INNOCENCE that killed him! The poor shy hobbit archers, who had never witnessed a killing before, shot their arrows reflexively, out of fright and dismay. Less "innocent" bowmen, like rangers would have never done the same, leaving Grima the privilege of a fair trial.

Yes the Scouring made hobbits better, IMO, - but for a short time. Unfortunately, all the positive effects would be obliterated by King Elessar's stupid decree prohibiting Men to enter the Shire. The greenhouse conditions would continue, leading to the inevitable outcome:

Hobbits are an unobtrusive but very ancient people, more numerous formerly than they are today […] Even in ancient days they were, as a rule, shy of 'the Big Folk', as they call us, and now they avoid us with dismay and are becoming hard to find. […] They seldom now reach three feet; but they hive dwindled, they say, and in ancient days they were taller.

So much for all the "training" Gandalf had provided for the hobbits…