334 ATTACKS BY RAILWAY COMPANIES. 



House of Commons, on the second reading of the Bills 

 containing them. Fortunately, the Society had within 

 its ranks several members of Parliament, who were 

 willing to undertake this task one which in its in- 

 ception was invidious, as the course was a novel one, 

 and the House was unwilling to debate private Bills, 

 before referring them to Select Committees. It was 

 felt, however, that questions of public welfare were 

 far better dealt with in the full light of the whole 

 House, than in Committees where the railway com- 

 panies were represented by the ablest counsel of the 

 day, and where public interests as a rule had been 

 disregarded or not protected. 



In the first three years after the constitution of the 

 Society, it resisted and defeated three or four schemes 

 of railway companies for invading London Commons, 

 notably cases for intersecting Barnes Common, Hamp- 

 stead Heath and Mitcham Common. It also defeated 

 a proposal of the Kingston Corporation to take 100 

 acres of Wimbledon Common for a sewage farm. It 

 was hoped that these cases had given a lesson to 

 promoters, and for some few years there was no serious 

 attack on the London Commons. By 1877 the lesson 

 appeared to have been forgotten, and several proposals 

 came before Parliament involving grave injury to Com- 

 mons by railways and other schemes. 



One difficulty which occurred arose from the fact that 

 it was by mere chance that information was obtained as 

 to whether, in any year, the multitudinous Private Bills 

 before Parliament, with schemes for every part of the 



