270 BURNHAM BEECHES. 



resulting from this state of things, at last induced the 

 Grotes to leave the district in which they had spent 

 twenty years. " The oft-recurring vexations incident to 

 the position I occupied," Mrs.Grote sa} T s, "namely that of 

 a lady residing in the centre of a population dominated 

 by a young servant, armed with the authority of the 

 owner of all the land, manorial privileges, and cottages 

 (nearly all) in my district, from whose arbitrary control 

 no appeal could be made on account of Lady Grenville's 

 advanced age ; these oft-recurring vexations made me 

 feel very uncomfortable." She felt there was no redress. 

 Mr. Grote was not prepared apparently to take up 

 the cudgels against Lady Grenville in the Law Courts. 

 Tliey left the district in consequence, in 1858, some 

 years before the revived interest in Commons, and 

 before the decisions in the Law Courts which might 

 have fortified their position against Lady Grenville. 



The incident of Mrs. Grote's connection with 

 Burnham Common is the more important from the fact, 

 as she told me later, a short time before her death, that 

 she had been the cause of a change of opinion in John 

 Stuart Mill on the subject of Commons. Mill, like 

 the earlier economists, had been strongly in favour of 

 inclosing them, with a view to the greater production 

 of the soil ; but she was able to point out to him, from 

 her personal experience, the importance of common 

 rights to the labouring people ; her narrative of what 

 occurred in Burnham completely turned the current of 

 his views on the subject, and was the cause of the 

 active support which he gave to the preservation 



