34 FORESTS, WOODS, AND TREES 
Birmingham, Leeds, and many others have at present 
(1845) no public walks. Shrewsbury, Newcastle-under- 
Lyme, Derby, and few more possess them. The metropolis 
except at the west and north-west, where the different 
parks minister so much to the comfort and health of the 
people, has no public walks, though Victoria Park, now in 
progress, will supply the want to the east. The large 
populations of Southwark and Lambeth to the south are 
yet without such a source of enjoyment and salubrity. 
The Select Committee of the House of Commons in 1835 
recommended that steps should be taken to supply the 
want. In 1840 the sum of £40,000 was voted by 
Parliament to assist local efforts for this purpose in 
provincial towns, and a few places have had grants from 
this sum.” 
The Commissioners in conclusion strongly recommended 
“that for the purpose of establishing public walks, in 
addition to legal facilities, the local administrative body 
be empowered to raise the necessary funds for the manage- 
ment and care of the walks when established.” 
Prof. James Thomson in a lecture (1) at Belfast on 
2nd March 1852, “On Public Parks in Connection with 
Large Towns,” said that Manchester then had three parks, 
though at the time of the Commissioners’ report it had none, 
and Victoria Park in the east of London had just been opened. 
This lecture led to the purchase, for the town of Belfast, of 
the large Ormeau Park. j 
Thomson pointed out that the rapid extension in the 
size of towns, while increasing the happiness of the rich, who 
escape to the outskirts, had entailed on the inhabitants 
new discomforts, of which the chief were smoky air and 
increased distance of their residences from the country. 
The establishment of public parks was a just claim on 
those who had been made rich by manufactures of towns. 
He advocated the laying of a tax on owners of vacant land 
near a town, as soon as it was first built on, the object of 
the tax being to supply funds for the establishment of 
permanent open spaces, as a compensation for the evil 
