STATUTE OF MERTON. 345 
four other cases there was practical surrender by the 
Lords of Manors without coming to a decision in the 
Courts. This was doubtless due to successes which had 
been achieved in the other and principal cases. 
The only two cases in which the results were 
unsatisfactory, those of Tollard Farnham and Rowley 
Green, were not inclosures under the Statute of Merton. 
The Tollard Farnham case turned upon the right of the 
inhabitants to provide themselves with fuel under a 
local custom. In the Rowley Green case, the inclosure 
was justified under a special custom of the Manor, not 
under the Statute of Merton. 
Although these decisions in the Courts of Law 
completely bore out the contentions of the Committee 
of 1865, that the Statute of Merton was practically 
obsolete, and that inclosures under it, if resisted, would 
be defeated, yet there remained a constant danger of the 
Act being used for arbitrary inclosures, owing to the 
unwillingness or inability of the Commoners to oppose 
them in the Law Courts. The spirit of encroachment 
may slumber for a time, but is always on the watch 
for opportunities. The fear of resistance may deter the 
inclosure of open spaces in populous districts, but it is 
not of much avail to prevent the filching of bits of rural 
Commons. It was scarcely less important a year ago, 
as a measure of precaution, than it was thirty years 
ago, to repeal the Statute, or to deprive it of its danger. 
As the Commons suits were decided in the Law 
Courts, it appeared that the arguments in favour of 
the repeal of this Statute, under which such wrongs 
