190 



the year 1818 is beyond question, indeed it is proved by the deeds already 

 quoted, and how then has it come to pass that they kave been lost. 



At the commencement of the present century a vast amount of common 

 and open land was enclosed, and the ai-guments in favour of doing so were 

 strong and unanswerable. The commons land in too many cases were not 

 merely waste, but wasted ; where all had the right to cut, nothing was allowed 

 to grow ; and so many animals were turned upon them in spring, that the grass 

 was quickly eaten up, and only those could keep animals who had other 

 provender for them as well ; and thus the poorer classes of inhabitants got 

 scarcely any benefit at all. These common lands formed a refuge moreover for 

 gypsies, travelling tinkers, and other wandering iJeople of still less reputable 

 habits, who lived on the district for the time they were there, levying 

 contributions, not only on the game preserves of the rich, but also on fields, 

 the hen-roosts, and the folds of the surrounding inhabitants. And thus when 

 the natural increase of population required more land for cultivation, and the 

 advance of civilisation rendered it so much more valuable, the neighbotiring 

 proprietors found no diflBculty in getting an Act of Parliament to share it 

 between them, and were naturally enough very glad to do so. ' ' Vast 

 quantities of land," says Mr. Fawcett, in a recent article of Frascr^s Magazine, 

 over which the public possessed invaluable rights, have gradually been 

 a,bsorbed by individual proprietors. Up to the year 1845 commons were 

 enclosed by private bUls. All public discussion was thus avoided, and it is now 

 impossible to form an adequate conception of the extent to which individuals 

 were emiched at the expense of the public and the poor. By means of these 

 private bills more than seven million acres of land were enclosed between the 

 beginning of the eighteenth century and 1845. The late Duke of Newcastle 

 (then Earl of Lincoln) once said in the House of Commons— "This I know, 

 that in nineteen cases out of twenty, committees of this House, sitting on private 

 enclosure bills, neglected the rights of the poor." Thus it fared with 

 the common lands of the Forest of Deerfold. Before the Act of Inclosure 

 was obtained due publication of the intention was doubtless made. All the 

 neighbouring proprietors and those who had used their privileges made personal 

 claims and struggled to get the best allotment they could. Their rights as 

 commoners became thvis extnguished to their satisfaction by individual com- 

 pensation. The really poor made no application themselves, and none was made 

 for them. The House of Commons, too, forgot to preserve their rights, and 

 thus as a body the commoners were unrepresented and ceased to exist. The 

 Act of Parliament alienated for ever the privileges which had before undoubtedly 

 existed as rights in common. The whole land is now freehold, and the poor 

 have no more right to the woods of Overlye than they have to cut the shrubs of 

 Yatton Court, or to gather flowers in Lord Bateman's garden at Shobdon. 



