TRANSACIIONS OF SECTION F. 645 



maintain the impolitic tax upon railway travellers, now a charge of nearly three- 

 quarters of a million upon working expenses ; and that, upon nearly 182 millions 

 of ' loans and dehentures ' an enormous saving in interest would he etlected, seeing 

 that a railway trust could borrow at 3 to Si per cent., instead of 4, 5, and 6, and 

 even 7 per cent., as prevails under the present system. It would matter but little 

 to proprietors whether income were derived from a 3 or 3i per cent. ' consol ' 

 stock, or from a 16i per cent. ' Tatf Yale ' stock, and if it were guaranteed, as 

 shown by the late flutter among water shareholders, an enormous rise would take 

 place in the money value of such income. Moreover, there are the proprietors of 

 46 millions of unremunerative capital to be considered. Nothing can be more 

 clear than that these undertakings should be treated as bankrupt concerns, and 

 sold for the benefit of creditors. They should be valued, and taken over by the 

 ' Railway Trust ' at their fair valuation. There should be one central government 

 of all the lines, with the service so arranged as to meet the utmost public con- 

 venience. The end kept in view should be to assimilate on the same principle the 

 transport of letters, of telegraph messages, of persons, and of merchandise. 



2. Cottagers and Open Wastes in the District of the New Forest. 

 By G. E. Briscoe Etee (a Verderor.) 



The subject of ' Cottage stock-keeping in connection with commonable lands * 

 is not pecuUar to the district, but is probably more largely exemplified here than 

 elsewhere in the South of England. 



This subject does not lend itself readily to statistical treatment for various reasons. 

 The cottagers are exceedingly reserved, and information is difficult to obtain ; besides, 

 few of them keep accounts, and the method pursued and its results vary somewhat 

 with the seasons and depend greatly upon the individuality of the cottager, upon 

 his resources and his circumstances. But, considering the high average of success 

 attained, these very difficulties stimulate me to draw attention to the subject, in 

 the hope that some experienced economist may write hereafter the chapter of which 

 this paper is a first rough draft. For, so far as I can learn, the value of common 

 rights to the exercisers and the method of their exercise is but imperfectly under- 

 stood, and yet some economic counterpoise is sorely needed to the prejudice with 

 which the ' commoner ' is too often regarded. The cottager-commoner is termed 

 contemptuously a ' squatter,' although in many cases his freehold, copyhold, or 

 lifehold tenement may date from Saxon times, and although his common rights, 

 often a relic of our Saxon liberties, may be as trulv his property as the soil of the 

 wastes whereby he largely lives is the property of the Crown or of the lord of tlie 

 manor. Few landlords, land agents, or land stewards and the like, seem to regard 

 a ' cornmoner ' even with tolerance, and fewer still seem to have considered his 

 value in the national economy. In particular, a just and inteUigeut consideration 

 of such commoners has too often been hickiug in past times amongst those who 

 have deemed it their interest or their duty to promote the inclosure of commonable 

 lands. For instance, it has been thought just that a common should be en- 

 closed, provided the present owner of common rights could be induced to barter 

 the right which woidd otherwise have benefited successive generations, for some 

 small allotment in land. But as the exercisers of common rights well know, 

 <and the allottees have too often experienced, the parts of an extensive and varied 

 waste when thus assigned in severalty, are never an equivalent to the small hus- 

 bandman for his share in a joint enjoyment of the whole. And a valuable property 

 (or legal estate) is thus partly sacrificed, or made easy to squander, and in practice 

 is found to disappear very shortly by absorption into large estates. 



In default of a sufficient perception of the lesser interests involved, open lands 

 have often been enclosed only to prove a complete disappointment to the owner of 

 the soil, and injurious to the- true interests of the immediate neighbom-hood and 

 sometimes even of the country at laro-e. 



The present paper is an attempt to unfold those lesser interests, and in it I pro- 



