somebody had gone through great efforts to put a fence somewhere ... In your example, "the common practice of taking down Chesterton fences", this is not the case.
You mean that no one has gone through great efforts to remove the existing Chesterton fences? Seems false.
Nobody has gone through great effort to create a Chesteron-fence-demolishing-machine.
Chesterton's meta-fence: "in our current system (democratic market economies with large governments) the common practice of taking down Chesterton fences is a process which seems well established and has a decent track record, and should not be unduly interfered with (unless you fully understand it)".