2 Dr. H. Franklin Parsons on the 
common is usually in legal language ‘‘ waste of the manor’: 
the soil belongs to the lord of the manor, but the freeholders 
and copyholders of the manor have certain rights over it—e. g. 
the right to turn out to pasture upon it as many horses, cattle, 
and sheep as their respective holdings can support during the 
winter ; and in some cases the right to cut fuel or dig gravel for 
their own use. 
In early periods of English history the land was mainly un- 
inclosed; but with the growth of the population the wastes 
gradually became inclosed, sometimes under the authority of 
law, at other times by unauthorized encroachments on a large or 
small scale. As Hudibras says— 
“The law condemns the man or woman 
Who steals a goose from off a common, 
But lets the greater villain loose 
Who steals the common from the goose.” 
In the last century and the earlier part of the present one the 
dictum of Dean Swift, that the greatest benefactor to mankind 
was the man who made two blades of grass grow where only one 
grew before, was in high esteem; and under the influence of the 
high prices of food, brought about by wars and duties on im- 
ported corn, numerous Inclosure Acts were passed under which 
much of the more fertile common land was divided up and 
brought under cultivation. Even so late as 1846 a general 
Inclosure Act was passed to facilitate the process of ,inclosure 
and obviate the need for obtaining private Acts. But in the 
middle of the present century the repeal of the Corn Laws made 
the country no longer dependent wholly on home-grown corn for 
its supply of food; the growth of towns drew attention to the 
importance of preserving open spaces in their vicinity; and 
people began to appreciate that man does not live by bread 
alone, but that there are other things—such as health, recreation, 
and enjoyment of the beauties of Nature—to.be taken into 
consideration. Until recent years the law had recognized no 
right on the part of the public at large to the use of a common 
for purposes of recreation, but only the right of the commoners 
to pasturage or similar uses ; hence it was in the power of the lord 
of a manor to buy up the commoners’ rights and inclose the 
common, even against the wishes of some of the commoners. 
But some thirty years ago a movement, headed by the late Prof. 
Fawcett and by Mr. Shaw Lefevre, was started for the preserva- 
tion of commons; in 1866 the Metropolitan Commons Act was 
passed for the preservation and regulation of the commons around 
London within the Metropolitan Police District, and, ten years 
later, the Commons Act of 1876. In the latter Act it is directed 
that inclosures, as opposed to regulation of commons, should not 
