TKANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 647 



In the New Forest, a hundred years later, a Imiited power was granted to the 

 Crown, by Act of Parliament, to enclose a portion of the wastes for the growth of 

 ship-timber ; but tlie Act jealously protected the commoners whose petitions against 

 the Bill describe the Forest as immemorially ' a great nursery for breeding cattle,' 

 and speak of ' many thousands ' as ' dependent ' on their rights of ' pasture, turbary, 

 and pannage ' in it. The Act provided that the land to be enclosed should be that 

 only which could be ' best spared from the commons and highways,' and provided 

 further, that the inclosiu-es should be again thrown open to pasture so soon as the 

 trees should be past injury by cattle. 



Thus did the Court of Chancery and Parliament protect the poor in 1591 and 

 1698 in the Forest and the manors. The lord had' not in those days, as practically 

 he has had in the nineteenth century, for his one-sixteenth of ownership hfteen- 

 sixteenths of the law ; it was not necessary, when the value of rights of common 

 were generalh' understood, to spend thousands of pounds sterling in appealing to the 

 Court of Chaucery for protection, nor years in agitation, and weeks in committee- 

 rooms to get a hearing from Parliament. And so, injurious inclosure was arrested 

 until the beginning of the nineteenth centurj-. As only a small fraction of the 

 surface was worth cidtivating, and as crafty attempts to sow the wastes with timber 

 for the benefit of the lord failed, because the Scotch fir, the most modern engine of 

 such encroachments, was either unknown or not procurable, these wastes remained 

 xmtil within living memory m statu quo. The bogs, the brook-side, and the swampy 

 ' lawns,' continued to provide the cattle of the commoners with pasture ; the heaths 

 furnished turf for fuel and ashes for their land, and the shaggy imtended woods 

 yielded beech-mast and acorns for their pigs, and timber for fuel and for the repairs 

 of house, hedge, and implement. 



Before passing on to show the use and value of the several rights of common, 

 attention should perhaps be drawn to some elements which make this region a type 

 of what commonable pasture-land should be. It combines an extended range with 

 considerable variety of soil and of water-supplj", and with, perhaps, every variety 

 of shelter and exposure. Any deficiency in one section, especially in running water, 

 is supplied by sufficiency or excess in another ; constant change of ground (essential 

 to success in stock-management) is ensured, being caused by the seasons, by the 

 weather, and by the instinct of the animals, which, further, in seeking food, and 

 a suitable soil under foot, find healthy exercise. The importance of an extended 

 range is especially seen from the rarity of those exposed ponds, or wet, or even dry, 

 spots called ' shades,' indispensable in smnmer, where a local draught in a treeless 

 expanse relieves the animals of the flies. Driven from the woods and sheltered 

 grounds, the animals then travel for miles ' to shade,' as the term is. Lastly, the 

 ' turn out ' in winter and spring has a real value, due partly to the mildness of the 

 winters, snow being rare and never lying long — partly to the early feed of the swamps 

 and bogs, at its best when the meadows are parched with drought — and partly to 

 the accessibility of healthy ground when the meadows lie cold and swampy with 

 the winter rains. 



The foregoing description roughly indicates the peculiar advantages secured to 

 this sectiou of the county by the preservation of these open spaces. Let us now see 

 how these advantages operate, and with what results. To speak generally, the 

 region is characterised by a moderate but widespread prosperity, even in these hard 

 times, and by a low percentage of pauperism ; indeed, the prosperity of the lower 

 strata of the agricultural population is prominent, especially that of small tenant- 

 farmers and of the cottagers, and this can be distinctly traced to the judicious 

 exercise of common rights. For the larger the fiirm, the less is the use made of the 

 wastes. The land of the farms is of better quality, and the proportion of meadow 

 is probably sufficient ; the improved breeds of stock are too delicate to turu out 

 upon the wastes, the tenant's capital is in most cases fully employed upon the 

 farm, and his attention absorbed in an increasingly elaborate business. I3ut the 

 wastes are the cottager's farm ; they are the soiurce of his livelihood, or of his 

 comforts, and of his capital. So he makes it his business to acquire the proper 

 stock, and to work the commons to the best advantage. For such reasons, and 

 because the simplicity of the cottager's life and business enables the eflect of com- 



