FOREST OF DEAN. 261 
stated that the existing plantation was in a thriving 
condition, varying in age from ten to seventy years, 
and that in about fifty years a large proportion of them 
would reach maturity. The Committee did not con- 
sider that it would be expedient to destroy or alienate 
the existing oak plantations, or any large part of them ; 
but that, as far as possible, the sales of land should be 
confined to the outskirts of the Forest, and to the 
vicinity of existing houses. 
In the following year, 1875, a Bill was introduced 
by the late Mr. W. H. Smith, then Secretary to the 
Treasury, for the purpose of carrying these recommend- 
ations into effect. It was in fact an Inclosure Bill. It 
gave power to the Crown to ascertain and buy off the 
Commoners’ rights, and to convert the Forest into its 
absolute property. As regards the Free Miners, it 
proposed that in future no fresh gales should be 
granted, and that the Crown should be empowered 
to buy up and extinguish existing gales. 
It very soon appeared that the Committee of 1874 
had been entirely misled as to the feeling of the people 
of the district, on the subject of their rights of common 
over the Forest, and as to the maintenance of the rights 
of Free Miners. Indignation meetings were held in 
the district to protest against the Bill. Numerous 
petitions were presented against it by the Free Miners 
and the Commoners, and the Commons Society was 
appealed to, to assist in defeating the measure. The 
Society, while not averse to giving power to the Crown 
to provide for the necessities of the district by selling 
