THE COMMITTEE ON COMMONS. 35 
“within fifteen miles of London which can be spared, 
or which should be reduced in area.” 
On the question of the existence of rights of com- 
mon over the London Commons as against the rights 
of the Lords of Manors, the Report adopted the views 
of those who contended that the non-user of such 
rights of late years, had not operated as a legal 
abandonment of them; it expressed the confident 
opinion that rights of common subsisted over all the 
Commons sufficient, if enforced at law, to abate any 
attempted inclosure under the Statute of Merton; but 
it pointed out the very great hardship that the owners 
of such rights should be called to contest the arbitrary 
inclosures of Lords of Manors, in the expensive legal 
proceedings necessary for the vindication of their rights. 
On the subject of the legal position of the public 
of London in respect of the use and enjoyment of their 
Commons, it said :— 
“The rights of the public at large are vague and unsatisfac- 
tory, for while it is generally acknowledged that a right 
may exist to traverse any of these spaces at will in all directions, 
and that no action for trespass would lie for such traversing, 
and even that a ‘servitus spaciandi’ over open ground which 
has in some measure been devoted to public use is also 
intelligible and known to the law, yet the legal authorities 
appear most unwilling to admit any general public right 
to exercise and recreation upon aay of these spaces, although 
such right may from time immemorial have been enjoyed, 
contending that it must be limited to some certain defined 
body of persons, as the inhabitants of a particular parish or the 
tenants of a particular manor. 
D2 
