he
uniform success of the commoners in the law courts, a plea for the
amendment of the law. The Statute of Merton, we have seen, purports to
enable the lord of the soil to inclose a common, if he leaves sufficient
pasture for the commoners. This statute was constantly vouched in the
litigation about London commons; but in no single instance was an
inclosure justified by virtue of its provisions. It thus remained a trap
to lords of manors, and a source of controversy and expense. In the year
1893 Lord Thring, at the instance of the Commons Preservation Society,
carried through parliament the Commons Law Amendment Act, which provided
that in future no inclosure under the Statute of Merton should be valid,
unless made with the consent of the Board of Agriculture, which was to
consider the expediency of the inclosure from a public point of view.

Rural commons.

The movement to preserve commons as open spaces soon spread to the rural
districts. Under the Inclosure Act of 1845 provision was made for the
allotment of a part of the land to be inclosed for field gardens for the
labouring poor, and for recreation. But those who were interested in
effecting an inclosure often convinced the inclosure commissioners that
for some reason such allotments would be useless. To such an extent did
the reservation of such allotments become discredited that, in 1869, the
commission proposed to parliament the inclosure of 13,000 acres, with
the reservation of only one acre for recreation, and none at all for
field gardens. This proposal attracted the attention of Henry Fawcett,
who, after much inquiry and consideration, came to the conclusion that
inclosures were, speaking generally, doing more harm than good to the
agricultural labourer, and that, under such conditions as the
commissioners were prescribing, they constituted a serious evil. With
characteristic intrepidity he opposed the annual inclosure bill (which
had come to be considered a mere form) and moved for a committee on the
whole subject. The ultimate result was the passing, seven years later,
of the Commons Act 1876. This measure, introduced by a Conservative
government, laid down the principle that an inclosure should not be
allowed unless distinctly shown to be for the benefit, not merely of
private persons, but of the neighbourhood generally and the public. It
imposed many checks upon the process, and following the course already
adopted in the case of metropolitan commo