COMMONS AND FOOTPATHS PRESERVATION: AN APPEAL.
IN another column will be found a letter from Lord Eversley which we recommend with every confidence to the atten- tion of our readers. Lord Eversley, as President, makes an appeal for funds for the Commons and Footpaths Preservation
Society, and we cannot doubt that when the reasons for his appeal are known be will obtain the help for which he asks.
To put the matter shortly, the work of the Society has very largely increased, and its income has decreased. The reason for the decrease of income is that many of its earliest members, who gave large subscriptions, have died, and that though the membership of the Society is larger than it was, their contributions in the aggregate remain the same; while in addition to this, the Local Government Board. have docked the Society of £150 a year by disallowing various small subscriptions made to it by local authorities. On the other hand, the work of the Society has increased for an equally simple reason, which is the confidence which is felt in it by the public. To understand how this confidence has been established we need only turn to the Society's record. The Society was founded in 1865, with Lord Eversley (then Mr. G. J. Shaw-Lefevre) as Chairman, and since then its work in saving and preserving for the use of the public spaces of common, footpaths, and rights of way has been continuously successfuL Wimbledon Common, Hampstead Heath, Burn- ham Beeches, Epping Forest, Hindhead, Ludshott Common, Merrow Downs, Nettlebed Common, Peppard Common, the view from Richmond Hill—we owe all these, or the state in which we find them now, and the conditions under which they are used by the public, to the work of the Society, sometimes, in the first instance, sometimes through a difficult and pro- tracted series of negotiations. Many other spaces, far too numerous to mention here, have been preserved or rescued, sometimes after an appeal to the Society as the only body in the country able to carry through the work with the necessary knowledge and experience. The Society has acted as arbitrator in hundreds of disputes which have been amicably settled without recourse to law. In the law courts, although the income of the Society has always been too small to allow it to conduct litigation, some of the principal lawsuits involving rights of way and of access to open spaces have been fought under its direct super- vision. In Parliament its persistent efforts beveled practically to the discontinuance of attempts to enclose common land by means of an Act; and of legislation which is due either directly or indirectly to the Society's initiation there are the Commons Acts of 1876 and 1899 ; the Metropolitan Commons Act, 1866; the various Open Spaces Acts; the Disused Burial Grounds Act; the protective clauses in the Copyhold, Military Lands, Allotments, Development, Housing, and Town Plan- lung Acts—in fact, almost the whole of the improvements in the law relating to commons, highways, and open spaces which have come into existence since its foundation.
It is a noble record, and we give part of it here, because it seems to be in danger of being forgotten. Indeed, that is one of the chief dangers, paradoxical as it may seem, which besets the existence and the work of such societies as this. People get used to hearing the name of the Society, and, since they never hear anything but good about it, gradually they get a sort of sub-conscious confidence in it without remembering exactly on what grounds their confidence has been built up. They speak of the Society with praise and approval, and recommend people in difficulties as to this or that contested right of access or of way to write to the Society and ask for its help ; but in so doing they do not always remember to justify their request with a subscription. " The Com- mons and Footpaths Preservation Society P Of course, an excellent Society. They've done no end of good work. They're quite dependable upon ; they give advice free in cases like yours. They're quite an old Society; they must have a lot of money." That seems to be the rule in talking or thinking about an old Society, that it must have a lot of money. Why that should be so it is hard to say; the respect, perhaps, due to old age. But as a fact the Commons and Footpaths Preservation Society, although it is old, and although it has done magnificent work without pay- ment, does not possess a lot of money. It has none. It lives from hand to mouth. Its income does not meet its expenses. And yet its work is increasing. During the past four years it has dealt with more than two thousand seven hundred cases, involving correspondence, advice, the taking of legal opinion, and frequently a personal visit to the spot in dispute. At the present moment it is advising in one hundred and seventy cases, which include attempts to enclose seven thousand four hundred acres of common land.
And so Lord Eversley makes his appeal. If we were to look further, beyond the actual record of the Society, for a reason why the appeal should meet with sympathy and generosity, one of the first reasons would be because it is Lord Eversley who makes it. He has been chairman or president of the Society since 1865. For forty-eight years he has given unremitting labour, anxious care, and the skill and experience which perhaps only he possesses, to work which is not for himself but for the public—that is, ourselves. Now that the very length of that record of service precludes us from hoping that it can be very greatly extended, the obligation lies strong on us to endeavour to pay part of our debt by placing the Society to which Lord Eversley has given a life's work in the position in which he wishes to see it. How great our debt is, and how deep our obligation to pay what we can of it, we may realize a little by trying to picture England as it would have been to-day if the Society had never come into existence, and if the work which it has done had been left undone. Imagine London as a city with Hampstead Heath, Wimbledon Common, and Epping Forest partly or wholly built over. Imagine the streets of London if the idea of the value of open space had never been developed, and if the parks and gardens and recreation- grounds which the Society has saved or formed for the public were so many acres of bricks and mortar. Imagine the difficulties in which we should find ourselves in the country in these days when field after field is being caught up in the grip of the town, if whenever it was proposed to close up a right of way, a bridle path, a field path, a stretch of common, a length of river hank or cliff or seashore, there were no Society to whom we could appeal in the knowledge that help and counsel would be forthcoming, and in the knowledge, too, that the Society was strong enough to make any private person or local authority think twice before deciding to oppose it. Though, indeed, an atmosphere of opposition is the very last description which ought to be applied to the conditions under which the Society does some of its very best work. Conciliation and protection of rightful interests are the objects at which it aims, and if its negotiations through all these years had not been conducted with infinite tact and patience we should all of us be greatly the poorer to-day. That brings us to the work of two of the Society's officers, Mr. Percival Birkett, its honorary solicitor, and its secretary, Mr. Lawrence Chubb. It is difficult to speak too highly of work such as Mr. Birkett's, given at a heavy sacrifice of time and money, and requiring wide experience as well as patience and skill in dealing with the legal interests of the numerous private owners and public bodies involved. But certainly no less high a tribute is due to the work done and the position which has been attained by Mr. Lawrence Chubb. It has fallen to Mr. Chubb's lot to have to inspect and report upon hundreds of rights of way, footpaths, bridle paths, and commons, and in a large proportion of them to act as adviser and mediator—in short, as an arbitrator trusted by all parties to the case. This is a task which could only have been carried out as it has been carried out by the exercise of exceptional gifts of tact and persuasion. It is almost impossible to measure the good work which stands to Mr. Chubb's credit on this count alone, and yet in his letter Lord Eversley describes the Society's secretary as overworked and underpaid. We can well believe it, and we ought not to be content that be should remain so. There, too, we owe a debt which ought to be repaid at once.
The Spectator therefore is opening its columns to receive , subscriptions on behalf of tls. Society, and it is in no conven- tional sense that we express our earnest hope that the response to Lord Eversley's appeal will be immediate and generous. Lord Eversley asks for a sum of £1,000 and for an increase in the Society's income of £400. This is not a large demand on the generosity of those who have been so deeply benefited, and we feel confident that both sums will be obtained. They could be obtained in an afternoon's meeting if only the imagination of possible givers could be touched and their impulses stirred, as they might be to-morrow by some great disaster or act of unselfish heroism. Suppose that to-day the work of the Society had never been done, that the commons were now built over and the field paths closed, and suppose that any typical gathering of English men and women, the congregation of a single west-end London church, for instance, could be shown London and England in that con- dition, and then be shown them, the next moment, as we see them to-day. Would not Lord Eversley get his £1,000 and his income twice and thrice over ? But he and his Society have actually brought about that very same difference between that imaginary England and our England of to-day, not, it is true, in a moment, but by the hard work of forty-eight years. Lord Eversley ought not to be allowed to remain in doubt a day longer as to the answer to his modest appeal. How modest it is we may realize by calculating the numbers of individual donors in our population of forty millions which would be sufficient to meet it. If ten persons would give £20 each, if twenty would give £10 each, if forty would give £5 each, if eighty would give £2 10s. each, and if one hundred and sixty would give £15s. each, the thousand pounds would be subscribed. If another four hundred would give a guinea a year each, the income asked for would be there in addition. We offer the Society our earnest hopes that before long both capital sum and income will have been added to their resources. The Spectator will each week acknowledge and print a list of subscriptions received, and we trust that the list will be long, and the subscriptions large and small alike. We are all of us under a debt, and it is a debt that we ought to pay.
We should be ingrates indeed if we allowed the Commons Pre- servation Society to go without the money they need—money which they only ask for in order to benefit the people who will subscribe. It only remains to be said that cheques should be addressed to the Spectator, 1 Wellington Street, Strand, London, W.C., and made payable to the Spectator and crossed "Barclay and Co., Gosling's Branch, Commons Preservation Account," or paid direct to Barclay and Co., Gosling's Branch, 19 Fleet Street, London, E.C., Spectator Commons Preservation Account.
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