ATTACKS BY RAILWAY COMPANIES. 337 
expropriate 100 acres of Mitcham Common for a 
sewage farm. This was opposed by the Commons 
Society and was ultimately withdrawn. 
In the same year the London and South-Western 
Railway introduced a Bill for taking a considerable 
slice of Barnes Common, for a coal-siding. The Local 
Board of Richmond also proposed to expropriate a part 
of the same Common for a cemetery. Both of these 
schemes were successfully opposed. Thenceforward 
scarcely a year passed in which there were not several 
schemes before Parliament for taking portions of Com- 
mons for railways, sewage farms, or cemeteries. They 
were uniformly resisted by the Commons Society, and 
were almost invariably defeated. Thus Wimbledon 
Common was saved in 1880 from a serious invasion of 
a railway company. Epping Forest was attacked in the 
same way, in 1580 and 1883, and on each occasion the 
proposals were defeated. In 1583 Mr. Bryce moved 
an amendment on the second reading of a Bill for this 
purpose, that “the House, while expressing no opinion 
as to the propriety of making a railway to High 
Beech in Epping Forest, disapproves of any scheme 
which involves the taking of any part of the surface of 
Epping Forest, which by the Epping Forest Act, 1878, 
was directed to be kept ‘at all times uninclosed and 
unbuilt on, as an open space for the enjoyment of 
the public.’” This was carried by a majority of 230 to 
$2, and the Bill was rejected. In the same year the 
Didcot, Newbury, and Southampton Railway Company 
proposed to construct a line through the very centre of the 
Ww 
