The Law of Commons and Waste Lands. By Charles J.
Elton. (Wildy.)—Mr. Elton's volume is very welcome, and is likely to be useful, not only to lawyers, but to the public in general. It discusses with great learning and with an exhaustive fullness a subject of very great interest and importance. Within the moderate compass of 300 pages there is contained a minute examination of the law from the very earliest period; and every position which the writer takes is fortified by a reference to authority. We would direct special attention to chapter xiii., treating- of the Statute of Merton, and other Statutes of Approvement, a source from which even in the present day danger is to be apprehended of undue enclosure ; and also to chapter xiv., "Of the Rights of the Public over Waste Lands." It seems impossible to withhold assent front the writer's doctrine that the public as such have no rights in or over com- mons, which they can enforce so as to prevent enclosure. The right of traversing waste lauds at will, or what is learnedly called the servituus spatiandi, seems to rest on such uncertain principles as to render it most desirable that Parliament should interfere to remedy this grave defect of the law. A measure which, while providing compensation for the- extinction of individual right, should preserve for our urban and oppidan populations whatever breathing spaces are still left in this crowded country ought not to be delayed any longer.
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