The feeling of the parishes adjoining to Wimbledon Common is
pronouncing itself strongly against Earl Spencer's Bill. At a pri- vately called but numerously attended meeting of freeholders and others residing in the vicinity, held at Wimbledon House (H. W. Peek, Esq.) on Saturday last, and comprising almost all those gentlemen whose property might derive enhanced value from the formation of the proposed Park, almost the only supporter of the inclosure and of the proposed Spencerian czarship was a Mr. Paine, who declared the noble Earl "too great a man" to be opposed. On the other hand, it was pointed out that the Bill, whilst con- ferring almost every conceivable power on Lord Spencer, imposed no kind of obligations upon him, in fact made him protector " without so much as binding him to protect ; that the proposed diversions of roads seemed to have been planned for the sole benefit of the noble Earl's future mansion and to the utmost inconvenience of the public, &c., &c. Admiral Sullivan urged that the portions of Putney Heath which are set apart for sale by the plan are really the most frequented parts of the whole Common, and from an ex- perience of several years at the Roehampton end stood' up in the most unexpected way for the morality of the gipsies and tramps, the need for whose removal is put forward as the main argument for the Bill. According to his testimony, the only moral nuisance on the Common is one indirectly of Lord Spencer's own making, and proceeds from some wretched women of the lowest class, who are attracted by the diggers in the lord of the manor's gravel pits (the full enjoyment of which he proposes to retain in the Bill)—a set of IBM whose conjugal infidelities almost provoked lynching at the hands of the gipsy wives on one occasion. Our article of last week, it seems, has to be corrected on one point. According to Mr. Paine, the extinction of Wandsworth Common is solely owing to the late, and not to the present Earl, who has made no further grants out of the waste. Let it therefore be understood that the Spencers only eat up commons at the rate of one per Earl. The opening of a subscription was announced towards defraying the cost of a vigorous opposition should the Bill be persevered in.
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