ATTACKS BY RAILWAY COMPANIES. 335 
country, contained any objectionable proposals in this 
direction. It was an impossible task to search through 
the Books of Reference and deposited Bills, with a view 
to discover whether any Commons were threatened. To 
obviate this difficulty, I moved, in 1877, an amendment 
to the Standing Orders of the House of Commons, 
requiring promoters of private Bills to advertise, in the 
London Gazette and in local papers, whether they 
proposed to take any portions of Commons for their 
works, and to state the extent which it was sought to 
acquire, and also to deposit plans with the Home Office, 
showing the details of the appropriation. The House of 
Commons willingly assented to the Standing Order. 
It had an immediate and important effect in disclosing 
the nature and extent of the invasions by promoters of 
all kinds on Commons, in every part of the country, 
and in enabling the Commons Society to take measures 
for opposing and preventing them. 
In every succeeding year it appeared that there 
were very large numbers of such schemes, more or less 
interfering with and injuring Commons, amounting in 
1880 and 1881 to forty and forty-one respectively, and in 
other years to somewhat smaller numbers. These were 
submitted to careful examination by the Society, and 
formed the subject of local inquiry. Communications 
were made with the local authorities and people of the 
districts thus threatened, and negotiations were entered 
into with the promoters. 
There are very few Commons near London which 
have not been menaced, during the last twenty years, 
