66 BERKHAMSTED COMMON. 
their carriages and dog-carts; shopkeepers from Berk- 
hamsted and farmers in their gigs; labourers on foot 
tested the reality of what they saw by wandering over 
the Common, and cutting morsels of the flowering gorse, 
to prove, as they said, that the land was their own 
again. Thus were the 430 acres restored to the 
Common, and two miles of iron fences removed. It 
was said that the erection of these iron fences had cost 
more than a thousand pounds. Their removal entailed 
a very heavy expenditure on Mr. Augustus Smith. 
There could not have been a more direct and deliberate 
challenge to Lord Brownlow, and it was to be expected 
that, within three days of the demolition, he would 
commence an action of trespass against Mr. Smith for 
forcibly pulling down the fences. Later in the proceed- 
ings of the case, Lord Brownlow’s counsel endeavoured 
to raise prejudice against Mr. Smith by a vigorous 
protest against what he called the lawless proceeding 
of removing the whole of the fences, in leu of raising 
an issue by removing a single bar. The Judge who 
tried the case—Lord Romilly—was not to be influenced 
by any such argument. He intimated to the counsel 
that the demolition of the fences was no more violent 
or reprehensible an act than their erection, if Lord 
Brownlow was not in his legal right, and that the issue 
of the suit would determine which of the two acts was 
unjustifiable. Subsequent events showed the wise and 
sound policy of pulling down the whole of the fences, for 
Lord Brownlow, who brought the action of trespass, 
died before the case could be heard and determined, and 
