M ATTACKS BY RAILWAY COMPANIES. 



The Society determined to come to issue with the 

 Corporation of Birmingham on this point. I moved on 

 its behalf in the House of Commons, on the second 

 reading of the Bill, that it should he an instruction to 

 the Committee " to inquire and report whether it was 

 necessary to extinguish the rights of common and the 

 user of the Commons by farmers over so wide a district, 

 and whether provisions should be inserted for securing 

 to the public free access to the Commons proposed to 

 be acquired." The instruction was at first vehemently 

 opposed by Mr. Chamberlain, on behalf of the Birming- 

 ham Corporation, but the sense of the House was so 

 strongly in favour of it that he withdrew his opposition, 

 and the instruction was carried. As a result, the 

 Committee to whom the Bill was referred, conceded all 

 that we asked for. A clause was inserted, at the instance 

 of Mr. Birkett, the solicitor of the Commons Society, 

 saving the Commoners' rights over the district, and 

 also securing to the public for ever the right of entering 

 upon the land and walking freely over the range of hills. 

 The clause went beyond that in the Thirlmere Act. 

 That measure only secured to the public the same access 

 to the hills as they had enjoyed in the past. The Bir- 

 mingham Act gave to the public a jus spatiandi, or 

 the right of roaming over the districts concerned. 



It has not always been possible to induce Corpora- 

 tions to forego their schemes, framed in the interest of 

 ecanomy, to expropriate portions of Commons in their 

 neighbourhood for the purpose of cemeteries. Two 

 such cases have occurred in the last few years those 



