The Sun.
London, England, 1839-04-29 00:00:00

THE PUBLIC HEALTH

We have great pleasure in transferring to our columns
the subjoined remarks from a Cambridge Contemporary,
who can be both just and liberal when not warped by
political prejudices. Alluding to the recent alteration
in the Standing Orders of the House of Commons, as
regards the introduction of Inclosure Bills, which was
adopted on the motion of Mr. D. W. Harvey, the
Cambridge Chronicle says :--e.
The doing away with old village greens under the
authority of an Inclosure Act, has always seemed to us
cruel towards the poorer portion of the community,
which, from time immemorial, exercised rights of owner-
ship over it. By such a measure the cottager is deprived
of a source of quiet and harmless enjoyment, and re-
ceives no equivalent in exchange for it ; and in taking it
away we cannot but think that the landowners themselves
are acting with little prudence, but are rather making
too great haste to get rich, instead of pausing and con-
templating the possibility of these petty gains eventually
producing very undesirable results. If they thought
the question calmly over, the great proprietors would
not grudge a few acres to the poor. They would
remember that when a person has nothing else given
him to occupy his thoughts with, he will certainly
turn his mind to mischief ; and when the labourer's
only source of harmless gratification is taken away
from him, what wonder will it be, if, after saunter-
ing up and down the town three or four times with
his hands in his pockets, in a vain search after some-
thing to amuse him, tired out at length and unable
to bear any longer having nothing whatever to do,
he betake himself to the public-house, or go at once
a poaching ? Now would he not be far better em-
ployed if he were playing a game at cricket, or even
if he went so far as to indulge in the profanity of
skittles, than if he were drinking or poaching ?
The village greens are fast disappearing. The plea-
sant walks through the old enclosures are almost all
being stopped up. If a person wants to go from one
village to another, he will find, most probably, that
the only way of getting there is by a high road, the
cart-track of which, not having been repaired for
the last six years, is nothing but a sea of mud for
nine months out of the twelve, and the sides of the
road, where a little grass might have been expected,
are rendered no better than a ploughed field by
having had cattle driven along them. We oould
point out dozens of such roads in this immediat.
neighbourhood (to the discredit of those whose duty
it is to keep them in repair), which are the only
means of direct communication between adjacent
parishes ; yes, dozens of these sloughs of despond
are there for young and old to struggle through, in the
place of those pleasant paths which used to run along
the green headlands, before the lord of the manor and

the landowners had settled between them what portion
of " the waste" each party was to have on the township
being enclosed.

Latterly, the House of Commons has insisted on a
clause being inserted in every Inclosure Act, by
which some portion of land is set aside for " the use
and recreation " of the public. In the village of
Chesterton, six acres, as we understand, is devoted
to this purpose, and those of our readers who know
the great benefit Parker's Piece is of, particularly to
the younger portion of the inhabitants of Cambridge,
will readily conceive that the new Town Green will
not be without its value to the young folks of Ches-
terton, now that the time of cricket playing is coming
on. - The portion being set apart to the public for their
" recreation," as well as their " use," it will not be in
the power of overseer, or churchwarden, or constable,
to keep the public out of it. In many places we
have known " Town-acres" which were originally in-
tended for the benefit of the inhabitants, to be let to
members of the vestry, and the rents carried to the cre-
dit of the poor-rates. In this way, a gift, originally in-
tended for the relief of the poor, came to be applied to

the relief of the rich ; and what was meant for the advan-
tage of the poorer inhabitants benefited no one but the
rate-payers. But this has now been put an end to, by
Parliament interfering to mark out and define the proper
uses to which such pieces of ground ought to be applied ;
and, for the future, they will be kept in hand as a plea-
sure ground for the public, instead of being let out to
farm, and made money of.
In common with a correspondent, whose letter on the
subject of foot-paths appeared in our columns a few
weeks ago, we greatly regret perceiving that the foot.
paths in this immediate neighbourhood, which used to
lead through the old inclosures, are gradually disappear-
ffin, while their places are supplied by nothing better
than' narrow hard gravel walks running along the sides of
dusty roads. Two causes will account fo this change. The
first is, that those who use foot-paths have in many instances
set the landowner against the rights of the public, by
trespassing on the adjoinii:g land. and hence has arisen
a desire on the part of the landown, r to get rid of the
path altogether that happened to run through his pro-
perty ; and the second reason is, that whenever an at-
tempt has been made to stop up an ancient footpath,
there has not been found among us a single man, or any
body of men, sufficiently public-spirited to oppose it.
The result is, that the rights' we Speak of have beau
repeatedly assailed, and, what is worse, with such suc-
cess, that there is scarcely one of them remaining. They
are irrecoverably lost.