208 BANSTEAD COMMONS. 
would have succeeded. With these rights their case was 
complete, and indeed overwhelming. The case was also 
a thorough and final vindication of the principles laid 
down by the Committee of 1865, and always insisted 
upon by the Commons Society—namely, that practically 
it is not possible to inclose a Common under the Statute 
of Merton without the sanction of Parliament, and that if 
contested in the Courts of Law with adequate resources, 
such attempted inclosures would certainly prove to be 
invalid and would be abated. 
In this case the policy of buying up and ex- 
tinguishing rights with a view to such inclosure, was 
carried out with a pertinacity, and with a disregard of 
expense, exceeding that in any other attempted 
inclosure. Sir John Hartopp spared no exertions and 
no money. He expended many thousands of pounds, 
and gave up enfranchisement dues, valued at many 
more thousands. He thought he had left so few 
Commoners outstanding that they might be safely 
defied. The result showed that all this was to no 
purpose. The rights still subsisting proved, after full 
inquiry, to be far more than enough to prevent 
inclosure of a single rood of the Commons. 
Sir John Hartopp, who had originally embarked on 
this policy, and the mortgagees, who advanced their 
thousands upon it, must have cursed the day when 
they acted upon the advice of their lawyers. The 
Commoners would gladly have compromised with the 
mortgagees after the failure of Sir John Hartopp, by 
paying a few thousand pounds, in order to secure 
