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CHAPTER XX. 
Tue RergaL oF tHE Stature or Merron. 
Iv was shown in an early chapter that the Committee of 
the House of Commons, on London Commons, in 1865, 
advised by a large majority, as the first and most 
important step for securing them to the public, that the 
Statute of Merton should be repealed. They contended 
that the Statute, originally passed in the interest of 
agriculture, had long ago ceased to have this justification ; 
that for centuries it had been recognised by most, if not 
all lawyers, that inclosures could not safely or justly, 
with regard to all the interests concerned, be made 
under it, or without the special sanction of Parliament ; 
that the proposition urged on behalf of the Lords that 
the non-user of rights of pasture over Commons, near 
London or elsewhere, had amounted to an abandonment 
of them, and that the Lords had practically become 
owners in fee of the land, free from any rights, was 
unsound and would not be maintained, if inclosure was 
resisted in the Law Courts; that the temptation to 
revive the obsolete Statute for the purpose of converting 
the London Commons into building land should be 
removed; and that Lords of Manors should not be 
allowed arbitrarily to inclose portions of Commons 
under the Statute, trusting to the Commoners being 
