TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 653 



and less than | per cent, on the rateable value, and ]3rf. per acre of land other 

 than wastes. 



And if proof be required that this result is larp^ely due to the prudent exercise 

 of common rig'hts, the evidence of one of the relieving otHcers of the Union, given 

 before a Committee of the House of Lords in 1875, may be alleged to show that 

 the inclosure of common lands'within the Forest or in the adjacent manors, affected 

 immediately the local prosperity of the population, and was especially felt by the 

 neighbouring cottagers who owned cows. The tenor of his evidence can be borne 

 out by other, and amounts to this, that those who kept a single cow previous to 

 an inclosure could after it no longer keep any, and those who had kept two could 

 only keep one. The further fact that the etfect was rather seen in diminished 

 livelihoods and comfort than in actual admissions to the workhouse, is an important 

 testimony to the extent of the advantages conferred by these open wastes. 



In conclusion, if I have at all succeeded in making out the case propounded at 

 the outset, I would, with your permission, look a little into the future and submit 

 one further point, appealing to you, not so much as lovers of justice, but as prac- 

 tical economists. 



The fact will have struck many of you in visiting our district that the Scotch 

 fir is rapidly overgrowing our waste lands. You are iiware that the self-sown 

 natiu-al timber is the property of the lord of the soil, but will not perhaps be aware 

 how fatal this lir is to pasture of any kind, or to what an extent the self-sowing 

 of the Scotch lir is a recognised engine of legal encroachment. But if such com- 

 moners and common rights as I have endeavoured to describe are worth maintain- 

 ing, should this method of abolishing both, literally by a side wind, be permitted 

 to continue? 



I once saw, when in the company of two learned members of the legal pro- 

 fession, many cartloads of fir-cones lying outspread on waste ground of the New 

 Forest, to ' self sow ' it with fir. No fir-trees grew within a mile in any direction. 

 It is also notorious that old trees, long since fit for cutting, in the edges of plan- 

 tations, are seeding wastes fiir and wide, with or without the knowledge of the 

 owner of the trees. To what extent is this practice reconcileable with the funda- 

 mental law of property, viz., that a man may not use his property to the injury of 

 the property of another ? 



3. On Decimal Coinage and Measures in America. 

 By R. DE Tracy Gould. 



The author advocated the introduction of the system of metric measurements 

 and decimal money, and gave an epitome of the history of their introduction into 

 the United States of America. 



4. On a proposed International Congress to diminish the Casualties at Sea. 

 By Don Artdro de Marcoartu. 



It is said that the British Commercial Marine is worth 230 millions sterling ; 

 that every year are lost 100 British ships and 1,600 lives. The author would not 

 exaggerate if he said that all the marine at large lost one ship and ten lives per 

 day. 



Tlie number of lives saved either by the life-boats of the Eoyal National Life- 

 boat Institution of this country, or by special exertions, for which it has granted 

 rewards since its formation, is ;?9,050. In 1881 they saved 1,121 lives. 



It has been stated for a new charitable ' Society for the formation of Increased 

 Places of Safety on our coasts' that the primitive one, with an income of 40,000/., 

 only saved 500 persons a-year. If those figures are correct, that means that the 

 saving of each life cost 80/. 



However, all English and foreign charitable associations are devoted to save 

 the lives of the wrecked, not to avoid or to diminish the collisions, the fires, and all 

 the causes of the wrecks. 



