We regret to say that our effort to raise the
£1,000 re- quired by the Commons Preservation Society has not met with the support which we hoped for. Not half the money desired has yet been obtained. We trust, then, that we shall not be thought wearisome by our readers if we once more insist with all the strength at our command on the need for helping the Society. The nation ought to show not only gratitude to the Society for what it has done in the past, but also gratitude in the sense of a lively expectation of benefits to come. England, and especially the south, would be an absolutely different place from what it is to-day but for the Commons Preservation Society. We will go further and say that if the efforts of the Society are now relaxed, owing to lack of funds, England in another thirty years will be a much less desirable place to live in, and, oddly enough, for the rich quite as much as for the poor. If the commons which are not yet put out of reach of the risk of enclosure are allowed to go by the board—and certainly in one way or another they will go by the board if there is no Commons Preservation Society to defend them—the majority of our population will be bereft of their heritage.
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