STATUTE OF MERTON. 357 
will not give their consent unless there be some strong 
proof of this. But their decision will not prevent any 
Commoner from appealing to the Law Courts. 
The most important bar, however, to inclosures 
under the New Act, will be the necessity of proving 
that the public interest will be promoted by them. 
This introduces a new element, fatal to the general 
pretensions of Lords of Manors. Hitherto they have 
not been compelled to have regard for public interests 
in their transactions under the ancient Statute. Private 
gain and aggrandisement, the desire to convert the 
Common into building land, or to add it to their parks 
or game preserves, have been their main or only motives. 
It is only necessary to consider how this new principle 
would have operated in the proceedings, which have been 
described in this work, to appreciate what a protection 
to the public it would have been. It may be claimed, 
with the utmost confidence, that in no one of these 
cases could the Board of Agriculture have been satisfied 
that the public interest was concerned in inclosure. It 
is certain, then, that if this Act had been passed thirty 
years ago, not one of these inclosures, which have been 
resisted and abated at such enormous cost, could 
possibly have been attempted, nor would the Lords of 
Manors have ventured to ask the approval of the Board 
of Agriculture on the ground of public advantage. 
The Act must be taken in connection also with the 
recent decision of Parliament in the Banstead Commons 
case, in which, as has already been pointed out, the 
principle has been finally affirmed that a Common may 
