The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1876-02-19 00:00:00

OUR COMMON LANDS AND THEIR
ENCLOSURE.

The Bill brought into the House of Commons by Mr. Cross
for facilitating and regulating the improvement of commons,
and for the amendment of the Enclosure Acts, has evoked
thelfollowing leader in The Times :
The story of our common lands and of their enclo-
sure, which may be considered to have taken a neiv
turn on Thursday night, is no unimportant part of our
social history. From the earliest times extensive areas
were left untilled and unappropriated, simply because
there were not the people or the cattle to till them,
even on the primitive plan of a single year's tillage
followed by a long interval of fallow. Nor was it safe
to squat on them a mile or two from other habitations.
As the unenclosed ground harboured game, the Lords
of the Manor were for kee, ing it as it was, and for
ages they had the power. In process of time, habita-
tion, with tillage and enclosure, pushed its way, leav-
ing only spaces of exceptionally unfruitful soil, and
generally a ring or zone of woodland round the-enclosed
territory, and between it and the parish boundary. It
provided the parish stock of fuel, and everybody had
the right, within reason, to cut and carry home a
fagot of it as often as he required. 1 o this daY, in
some parts of England, the labourers' wives and
mothers maintain a right to pick up sticks, teer off
branches, and destroy fences quicker than time can do
its work with them. The custom keeps its ground,
though it is only justifiable as a tradition from the
very recent days of common woodland. But there came
a time when it was deemed an imperiousneceseity to add
every possible acre to the corn-growing, grass-growing,
and even the timber-growing capacity of the country: The
King wanted men, and that settled every question. Ihe
people, too, wanted employment, and enclosures gave
it. In the heart of villages, or about them, were com-
mons which needed a still stronger reason to justify
their conversion to private use. It was readily forth-
coming in the lamentable fact that the public—that is
the commoners and the people. at large—made a bad
use of them. These wastes, as they were justly termed,
were out of the pale of civilization. They were un-
drained •, they were dirty; they were pastured by lean
and, perhaps, diseased cows, lame horses, and wander-
ing swine • gipsies pitched their tents in them, and out-
castsesomtimes obtained more permanent possession of
them. Even now the worst hovels which offend
the eye of the traveller may be found on the ouLleirts
of commons long since enclosed, where they perhaps
shelter the descendants of the first squatters on the
waste. When near enough to be useful for village
sports such open spaces were a nuisance to quiet
folks, who were disturbed by the bad language, fight-
ing, and drunkenness, which there was in those days
nobody to control. The protection law failed to
give what was sought in Acts of Parliament or in a
high-handed exercise cf manorial rights • and village
commons which had come down from all antiquity
were parted among the squire, the clergyman,
and the chief householders as so much lawful spoil.
The nuisance might survive, but it was driven out
of the village or to the back premises of the public-
house, and then cows were milked, cabbages grew,
and laurels flourished, where skittles and football had
been nightly played. The artificial value of land—
that is, its value as ornamental space, and as mere
territory over and above anything that can be got out
of it by any expenditure—has greatly increased the
rage for enclosure. The Roman poet complained that
in his days the rich were enclosing the very sea, and
in these days they enclose sands as barren as the sea
shore. As the most Communistic reformers insist on
the cultivation of every acre, and decry its reserva-
tion for picturesque effect or residential enjoyment,
they have not much to complain of in the process
which has led to an excessive cultivation. However,
at length there awoke in all classes, and with a re-
markable unanimity, a deep feeling that England was
losing a good deal of that Old England we are all so
fond of in the enclosure of all her commons. It was
high cultivation everywhere; the roadsides disap-
peared, the village green was only to be found in
poetry, and you had to walk everywhere between
, walls, rails, or clipped hedges. The reaction was
timid at first, and only took courage to ask an
acre or two of playground, the allowance of a cheap
commercial school. It appears that, in effect, about
one acre in six hundred has been rescued for this
purpose. But, as enclosure went. on rapidly under
the new legislation which dispensed with the neces-
sity of a private Bill in each individual case, the
grievance cried the louder for redress, especially as
the metropolis itself was now the chief sufferer.
Suburban heaths, commons, and forests were threat-
ened, and actually assailed, at the very „time that
there was a demand for parks for the people to balance
those already enjoyed by the wealthy. The result
was a stoppage and a dead block. Now for a good
many years the work of enclosure, at one time so
brisk, has stopped, simply because the old practice
was found intolerable and Parliament could not agree
as to any improvement in it Such is the knot which
Mr. Cross proposes to unravel.
The chief feature of the Bill, which will be found to
bear out promise af the speech with which he intro-
duced it on Thursday evening, is that he proposes a
special consideration and facilities for the special
treatment and proper regulation of any common
land which, after due inquiry, it may be found de-
sirable to keep wholly or partially under a common
tenure, and that for the use of all the population
within reach of it. When Mr. Cross extends to a
radius of six miles the right of a hearing as to the
treatment of common land in certain circum-
stances, he would seem to have chiefly in his eye
cases such as those which have lately been before the
public. They are the cases where populous towns
are concerned. Nobody at all acquainted with any
town of even twenty thousand inhabitants can fail to
know that since the beginning of this century it has
lost, by its own growth, its own prosperity, and its
own requirements, a very large part of its former
beauty and enjoyment. It has lostitsfootpaths through
the green fields, its riverside walks., ite. eldtathing
places, its woods,and coppices, its tueu.nterruptegl view
over the roadside fences, its occasional glimpses of the
distant landscape, its bits of common, its pure river
water, its- trout streams, , its' turf, its "banks and
braes," and, indeed,' every- chance of for-
getting for an hour that one -lives•ine oseetown.
Walls of brick or stone, gravel, asplealtorenders,
coal-tar, smoke, traffic, and steam everywhere, are
but is poor compensation for Naturea own work.
There remained till lately abundant opportunities of
retaining or creating something like A, rus in vs-be, here
and there, all round our most prosperous and progres-
sive towns. An open space with a rural, or a sylvan,
character half-a-dozen miles from a town is in these
days only a quarter of an hour from it, and thsref ore
near enough for a half-holyday. 'Even a town with.*
small population may have an interest in sUch, a spot
for occasional visits. In these dap manufacturing
enterprise ransacks the whole country, even to its
most rural recesses, looking for cheap and abundant
labour, unpolluted streams, and other natural advan-
tages, not the least being the opportunity of a pleasant
residencewithin a few minutes walk of the place of busie
ness. The result is that one country town after another
is added to the realm of the sovereign steam engine,
with all its:disagreeable accompaniments. Wherever
the chimney shoots up the country abandons the up%
equal contest and flies away. Every town so fortu-
nate, or so unfortunate, as to have a splendid enanue
facturing future will be provided by Mr. Cross with
the opportunity of reserving any bits of common land
near enough to be the future pleasure grounds or playa,
grounds of its increasing population. Of course, there
will ke interests to be satisfied, but it is now assumed
that a neighbouring population, even some miles off,
has an interest also—an interest as important and sub-
stantial as that which can be measured by its pro-
ductive or money value.
The admission of th subject into the Quiet