340 ATTACKS BY RAILWAY COMPANIES. 
The Society determined to come to issue with the 
Corporation of Birmingham on this point. I moved on 
its behalf in the House of Commons, on the second 
reading of the Bill, that it should be an instruction to 
the Committee “to inquire and report whether it was 
necessary to extinguish the rights of common and the 
user of the Commons by farmers over so wide a district, 
and whether provisions should be inserted for securing 
to the public free access to the Commons proposed to 
be acquired.” The instruction was at first vehemently 
opposed by Mr. Chamberlain, on behalf of the Birming- 
ham Corporation, but the sense of the House was so 
strongly in favour of it that he withdrew his opposition, 
und the instruction was carried. As a result, the 
Committee to whom the Bill was referred, conceded all 
that we asked for. A clause was inserted, at the instance 
of Mr. Birkett, the solicitor of the Commons fociety, 
saving the Commoners’ rights over the district, and 
also securing to the public for ever the right of entering 
upon the land and walking freely over the range of hills. 
The clause went beyond that in the Thirlmere Act. 
That measure only secured to the public the same access 
to the hills as they had enjoyed in the past. The Bir- 
mingham Act gave to the public a jus spatiandi, or 
the right of roaming over the districts concerned. 
It has not always been possible to induce Corpora- 
tions to forego their schemes, framed in the: interest of 
economy, to expropriate portions of Commons in their 
neighbourhood for the purpose of cemeteries. Two 
such cases have occurred in the last few years—those 
