A NEW FOE TO COMMONS AND OPEN SPACES.
NV[ publish to-day a letter from Sir Robert Hunter, Chairman of the National Trust, and one of the most prominent members of the Committee of the Commons Preservation Society, calling attention to the danger to which one of the most beautiful commons in Surrey is exposed at the present moment. The facts as regards the scheme to enclose a portion of Witley Common are roughly as follows. The parish is in need of a new burial-ground, and very naturally, from one point of view, desires to get the necessary land as cheaply as .possible. Accordingly, instead of purchasing it from a private owner at the market rate, it proposes to obtain it at a nominal price by utilising a portion of the common. Happily, this transaction cannot be effected without the leave of the Board of Agriculture. A request, however, for such leave to enclose has been made by the Parish Council; and though the proposal was strongly opposed by a large and representative deputation which waited upon Lord Carrington, the Minister of Agriculture most unfortunately, and, as we venture to think, most mistakenly, has granted a local inquiry into the scheme.
If there were any reason to regard Witley Common as an exceptional case, or if the principles upon which the Witley scheme will be decided were different from those which are likely to prevail in other places, the matter would have only a local interest. The inhabitants of the district, of Surrey generally, and those Londoners who in increasing numbers make Surrey their play- ground, might deplore the diminution of the commons area of West Surrey and its disfigurement by a cemetery, but the wider public could hardly be appealed to in the matter. As it happens, however, the Witley scheme presents no special or exceptional features. It is a typical case, and if the Board of Agriculture sets a precedent here and allows the enclosure of the common for a. burial- grouud, it is not too much to say that no rural common in England will be safe. It is admitted that there is plenty of other land available in Witley for the purpose of a burial-ground, and that there is no difficulty in obtaining it at the market price. Again, the piece of common desired by the Parish Council is in no sense specially suitable. If, then, the Board of Agriculture in the present instance admits the right of the Parish Council to demand that the lord of the manor should be allowed to enclose a portion of the common in order to provide them with cheap land, it will be impossible to resist future demands of a similar kind in other parts of England. The Witley precedent will govern future schemes, and the Board of Agriculture will have no ground for demurring when it is asked by other Parish Councils to do for them what it has already done in Witley. Nor will it be possible to confine the precedent to burial-grounds. When Parish or District Councils want land for other public purposes, they will naturally want it cheap, and in order to get it cheap they will be sure to turn their eyes to common land and to invoke the Witley case.
A generation ago the common lands of England suffered a most serious diminution owing to the fact that railway companies, wherever possible, were in the habit of taking common land on which to lay their lines. They argued, and with some show of justice from their own point of view, that it was perfectly right for them to do so. Such land was rough and unimproved, atid therefore to make use of it was not only economical, but did not diminish the cultivable area of the country. Again, if the cost of making railways could be reduced, the cost of transporta- tion would also be diminished, and it would become easier and more profitable to provide the public with travelling facilities. In a word, it was a matter of public advantage to lay railway lines on commons wherever possible. The result of such arguments was that during the mid-Victorian era the area of common land in England was most seriously reduced. For the last twenty years or more, however, thanks to the action of the Commons Preservation Society and to the general enlightenment of public opinion, the rail- ways have been forced to keep their hands off the commons. Unfortunately, we seem now to be entering upon a period when the smaller public bodies are likely to ' become quite is great enemies in the matter of commons as were the rail- way companies in old days. Land is more and more being required by such local bodies, and in their opinion it is an actual public advantage—or, at any rate, an advantage to the parish or district—to take unused, rough, and so cheap common 'land, instead of burdening the locality by the purchase of expensive private land. From many points of view, this last and final assault on our commons is the most dangerous to which they have been exposed. The lord of the manor, who is now almost entirely precluded from ordinary enclosure for his private gain, is inclined to be sympathetic when approached by a public body. In the first place, he gets a certain sum for giving up his manorial rights which in existing circumstances he could not obtain in any other way. Next—for we by no means wish to accuse the lords of the manor of being greedy of small profits—he is able to do what from the local point of view is a popular thing, that is, to oblige a Parish or District Council. Thirdly, as he is in all probability the largest landowner in the parish or the district, his land is saved from the higher rate which would have to be imposed if private land were taken instead of common land. While the landowner is thus not unnaturally influenced in favour of enclosures promoted by local bodies, the influence of the commoners and of the inhabitants of the parish, who at one time could be relied upon to resist enclosure, is, as a rule, not to be counted upon. The commoners and inhabitants generally are ratepayers, and therefore are greatly affected by the possibility of getting land cheap, and thus preventing an increase of the rates.
It comes, therefore, to this, that the only persons who .can be relied upon to resist an enclosure for local purposes when it is promoted by a local authority are those members of the general public who care for preserving the beauty of the country, who realise the immense importance of retain- ing as many open spaces as possible in our congested and overpopulated country, and who appreciate that the health of the nation, mental and physical, depends upon there being portions of the country over which the people, not only of the locality, but of the great urban districts generally, can wander in freedom. Those persons no doubt constitute a large and powerful class in the aggregate, but, by the very nature of things, their action must be central rather than local. Their views can hardly be expected to affect opinion at Witley, or whatever is the parish in question • but they do not, for that reason, demand less consideration from public Departments. In our opinion, therefore, it is an entire mistake to treat the matter as one for local inquiry, and as if it could be decided by counting heads in the parish, or ascertaining the views of representative inhabitants. For example, we say deliberately that if it could be shown that every single person in the parish of Witley, or even every person residing within a radius of five miles from Witley Common, approved of the enclosure and declared himself anxious that it should take place, we should nevertheless hold that no case for enclosure had been made out, and that it was the business of the Board of Agriculture to protect Witley Common and all other commons from enclosure, not in the interests of the locality, but in the interests of the people of England as a whole.
Remember, it is too late to take the pedantic legal ground that the people of England have nothing to do with Witley Common or any other such common, and that if the lord of the manor, the commoners, and the locality generally are agreed no one else has any right to interfere. That view was arguable in the "fifties" and. "sixties." It was, however, definitely negatived and set at naught by the legislation dealing with commons and enclosures which was inaugurated in the "seventies" wad has prevailed ever since. That legislation was definitely based upon the assumption that the people of England as a whole had rights in the commons, and that their interests must be consulted and safeguarded when any proposal was made for enclosure. The fact that the Board of Agriculture must consent to enclosures before they become legal implies a most complete admission of the principle. It must be noted that if a blunder is made in the Witley case, and a bad precedent set, the re- sulting evil will not be a small one or one that can be subsequently remedied. The loss of an acre by enclosure is a loss which is irrevocable. Burke, dealing with the alleged rapacity of the East India Company in regard to the wealth of India, likened "the Nabobs" to birds of prey, and declared that their appetite was continually increasing . for a food that was continually wasting. We may say the same of the commons Of England. The food is continually wasting ; but unfortu- nately the appetite of public bodies and others desirous of enclosure is continually increasing. Unless, then, a strong stand is made on the question, we may find that the rapacity of the landowners in the matter of enclosure in former days is far outdistanced by the rapacity of public bodies. In our opinion, the only safe plan is that of establishing and maintaining the principle that there must never be a diminu- tion of the total area of common land. If common land has to be taken for any purpose of urgent public necessity and because it is the only land available, then in every case an equivalent acreage of land should be bought as near the enclosure as possible and dedicated to the public. If this principle were established and maintained, we venture to think that we should find the pleas that common land was the only land available for a cemetery, sewage farm, pumping station, or what not immensely diminished.
We would, then, once more urge most strongly upon the Board of Agriculture the necessity for not making a pre- cedent in favour of enclosure in the Witley case. In our view, they have already done serious damage to the cause of commons preservation by making a precedent for local inquiry where the wishes of the locality ought not to be the governing factor. That is unfortunately past protest. If, however, they should in the end sanction a precedent for enclosure, so great an injury will have been done to the public interest that we hold it will be necessary to have the whole question raised in Parliament, and to ask the House of Commons to record its decision against further commons enclosures.
There is another point in regard to the dealing of public bodies with common lands which urgently demands the atten- tion of Parliament. The rural district authorities, which are generally the road authorities, claim to exercise the right to enter upon common lands and take from them at their will and pleasure stone, flints, and gravel for the purpose of road-making. This right was reasonable enough fifty or a hundred years ago, when road-making was so vital a matter and when in many districts half the land was unenclosed. At present it has become a most serious evil. There are large portions of Surrey where some of the most beautiful common land in England is being ruthlessly destroyed by the road authorities in their grubbing for flints and stones. We may name, as two instances out of many, Clandon Downs and Hackhurst Downs. In these cases the road authorities have destroyed acres of beautiful and smooth green turf, turf which had not been disturbed since the Phoenicians brought their tin along the Western road, or since the pilgrims rode to Canterbury. The havoc and ruin wrought by the road authorities in these places must be seen to be believed. Their action affords a marked contrast to that of the lords of the manor, who in most cases have shown a praiseworthy and public-spirited desire not to injure the commons by grubbing up the flints or opening gravel-pits in the more beautiful portions of the downs, for the lords have in many cases the right to break the surface of the wastes of their manors for flints, gravel, and sand, and to sell the same. It was supposed that popularly elected bodies would set a good example in preserving common lands from injury. Instead, they are its worst enemies, and the most potent destroyers of the public heritage. In our opinion, the time has arrived when the right of the public authorities to go upon common land and destroy its beauty in order to get stone and gravel at a shilling or two a load cheaper than they could buy it in the open market should be put an end to. It is hardly necessary to say that there would be no resistance to such a proposal on the part of the landlords and commoners, for they suffer equally with the public from the depredations of the public bodies. The case is eminently one for prompt action, for if nothing is done in Surrey, at any rate, some of the most beautiful common laud in the county will be irretrievably ruined. Cannot the Commons Preservation Society manage to procure legislation for this purpose during the course of the coming Session ?
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