HC Deb 03 March 1863 vol 169 cc1031-8
MR. TORRENS

said, he rose to call attention to the Reports of the Commissioners of Woods, Forests, and Land Revenues, reporting the sale of rights of the Crown in Waltham, Epping, and other forests in Essex, and to the fact that in consequence of those sales numerous in-closures had been made in the forests by the purchasers of Crown rights. Towards the end of the last Session, he had given notice of his intention to call attention to the subject, which he renewed at the be ginning of the present Session. While his Motion referred chiefly to the past, that of the hon. Member for Maldon (Mr. Peacocke) referred altogether to the future. The Report of the Commissioners of Woods and Forests of last year showed that a number of inclosures had been effected by private individuals. He did not question the power of the Crown to dispose of its rights. What he complained of was, that the purchasers should possess themselves of the land over which the rights had been exercised by the Crown, and should deprive others of rights of pasturage which were at least as unquestionable as those sold by the Commissioners of Woods and Forests. The most grievous evil of all was the taking away of the right which the citizens of London had enjoyed from time immemorial to resort to the Royal forests in the vicinity of the metropolis for purposes of recreation. He agreed with what had been so emphatically stated in that House and elsewhere, that such inclosures were illegal. An Act passed in 1843, provided that no land within fifteen miles of London should be inclosed without the sanction of Parliament; and the same prohibition was extended by a subsequent Act to all common lands throughout the country. It might be said that these Acts did not apply to Royal forests; but he submitted, that when the rights of the Crown were sold, the land over which they had been exercised ceased to be Royal domain, and remained to be dealt with in the same way as other commons. When the forest of Hainault was disafforested by Parliament in 1851, due care was taken to preserve the rights of the public; but of one allotment of 600 acres, fifty acres were set apart for the public. In the case of another forest in Oxfordshire, disafforested in 1853, and of a third in Oxfordshire and Northamptonshire, clauses were introduced into the Acts providing that any person injuriously affected by the passing of the law should receive compensation. The same remark was applicable to other cases. In 1850 a Royal Commission was appointed, under an Act of Parliament, to inquire into the condition of the Royal Forests; and the Commissioners stated in their Report that the inclosures of which he complained were clearly illegal. Moreover, in the notorious case of Hampstead Heath, Parliament had over and over again refused to permit the lord of the manor to inclose. But the vast majority of purchasers of the rights of the Crown, mentioned in the Reports, were not lords of the manor, and they had still less right to interfere with the public interests. He might be told that the aggrieved parties could have recourse to the courts of justice. It appeared, from the Report of the Royal Commission, that the only court to which appeal could be made was the Court of Exchequer. Would it not be a mockery to tell an artisan of London or a poor forester deprived of his rights, that he might go to that expensive tribunal to obtain justice; formerly there was a special court for the trial of forest cases, called the Verderer's Court; but it had fallen into abeyance for years, and there was now, practically, no cheap and easy mode of obtaining justice in such cases. The freeholders of the county of Essex ought to elect four verderers; but the vacancies caused by deaths had not been filled up, and now there was only one verderer, the high sheriff of the county. Again, he could not find that any publicity was ever given to the sale of Crown rights. An intending purchaser made a personal or written application to the Commissioners of Woods and Forests, and the bargain was soon struck. The fact of the sale was not made known until the purchaser proceeded to inclose. In one instance, that of Chigwell Forest, indeed, an in-closure took place without any purchase of the Crown rights or any application to the Commissioners. The incloser was a Mr. Hodson, who claimed to be lord of the manor, but his act was generally regarded as a most barefaced violation of the rights both of the Crown and of the foresters, and it had been made the subject of a correspondence with the office of Woods and Forests. No such case could have happened if there had been a careful administration of the Royal forests. Another point of complaint was that the rights of the Crown had generally been sold for a mere trifle. The Crown rights over 434 acres were sold to the Marquess of Wellesley for £1,890. In another case 695 acres were given for £3,349; and Mr. Money Wigram obtained 1,377 acres for £4,468. Altogether the rights of the Crown had been sold over about 4,000 acres, and the price obtained amounted to £18,500—a paltry sum for such a vast quantity of land, some of it very valuable. It had been the custom of late years to encourage the formation of peoples' parks in the metropolis, and large sums had been voted for that purpose; but most persons would far rather spend a day at Epping Forest than go through the humdrum of a promenade in one of those parks, however valuable such places might be in their way. Hundreds of thousands of the humbler classes in London were interested in the question, and vast numbers of excursionists were taken by railway and other conveyances to Epping Forest for recrea- tion. In fact, the road thither on some fine days might be compared to the road to Epsom on a Derby day. The facilities for getting there by railway were being increased; and if the land were left open for the people of London to take healthful exercise upon it, there could be no doubt they would gladly avail themselves of the privilege. He had endeavoured to show that these inclosures were illegal, and at variance with the precedents set in regard to the other Royal forests. If he had shown that they were at variance with the case of Hampstead Heath, he thought he had done enough to induce the House to agree to his Motion for inquiry, for it was an inquiry only that he now sought. He would therefore conclude by moving for a Select Committee.

MR. COX

, in seconding the Motion, said, that thousands of poor persons had signed petitions to that House praying for an inquiry into the manner in which inclosures took place in these forests. Speaking on behalf of those poor persons, he asserted that their only desire was to maintain the rights which the people had enjoyed for centuries in these forests, and that they had no wish to interfere with the rights of others. If the Committee were granted, he believed it could be shown by conclusive evidence that the inhabitants of the metropolis had long possessed the right of going upon the land in question, whenever they pleased, for fresh air and innocent enjoyment. Some years ago he had himself seen large processions of citizens, accompanied by barges fitted upon wheels, going from Mile End Road to Epping Forest and a place called Fairlop, where an immense oak stood—a custom which had existed for between one and two hundred years. He maintained that these lands belonged to the Crown; that those who had inclosed parts of them could claim no other right than that of turning out cattle to graze upon them; and that the people ought not to have their right of going there for recreation to use the word of the hon. Member for Maldon "filched" from them. It might be said that these inclosures took place with the consent of the Crown, but in the case of a recent inclosure of 101 acres at Chigwell, both the Crown and the Inclosure Commissioners had been set at defiance. Mr. Gore, of the Woods and Forests Department, was written to on the subject, and he replied that it was impossible for the Crown to raise the question in a court of law; and when the In- closure Commissioners were next appealed to, they stated that they had no jurisdiction, and could take no steps in the matter. There were about forty other inclosures varying from a hundred down to as low as four and even two acres each which could be proved to be illegal; and the open land, on which the people had for ages taken recreation, was gradually disappearing. Surely, that was a state of things which the House could not refuse to inquire into, and thus set the question of right at rest now and for ever.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That a Select Committee be appointed to inquire into the legality of inclosures in Waltham, Epping, and other Forests in Essex, and to ascertain what steps ought to be taken to preserve the rights of the public, of the poorer foresters, and the inhabitants of the metropolis, within the Forests, as well as to inquire into their general management.

MR. PERRY WATLINGTON

said, he could not but think that the proposal was of doubtful expediency—at any rate, he felt bound, upon the part of many of his constituents, to protest against the assumption upon which the Resolution was founded, that the inhabitants of the metropolis, or the public generally, had any legal right whatever over the wastes which were the subject of consideration. The question raised was a question of legal rights; legal rights had to be investigated; legal rights had to be respected; and it appeared to him that a court of law was a more fitting tribunal for this purpose than a Committee of the House of Commons. The House should at least know that this very question had been, last year, the subject of judicial investigation, and the result of that investigation before Justice Wight-man was this—a verdict altogether adverse to the claims set up by the public over the waste. The question put by the learned judge to the jury was:—Do you find that, in the Manor of Woodford (a portion of the forest) there is a custom for the inhabitants of that manor to wander about over the waste for air and recreation? and the answer given by the jury was "No." Had, then, the inhabitants of the metropolis any right? What, too, was to be the full scope of this inquiry? During the last few years many inclosures had been made under grants from the lords of the manors, and many very handsome edifices had been erected upon them. The Infant Orphan Asylum at Wanstead, he believed, was an instance of this; the Merchant Seamen's Institution too, also in the same neighbour- hood; and there were numerous villa residences of citizens scattered throughout the forest. Did the hon. Gentleman intend to inquire into the titles of all these properties—did he intend to put the proprietors to the annoyance, anxiety, and expense of defending their titles before his Committee? This could hardly be his intention, and yet the words of the Resolution seemed to intimate that it was. There seemed to be an impression in the House, that it would be desirable to keep all these open places uninclosed entirely for the benefit of the inhabitants of the metropolis, but surely it could not be the serious intention of the House to keep thousands of acres uncultivated, when a few hundred acres, well regulated, would suffice for this purpose. It could not be the intention of the House to neglect altogether the wishes of the inhabitants of the district itself— and entirely to forego the advantages of inclosure. It could not be the intention to declare those to be rights which a court of law held were not rights, or to appropriate for the use of the public that which the law said was the private property of individuals. The law declared that the ownership of the soil was in the lord of the manor, and the lord of the manor, with consent of the Homage, had power to make grants for inclosure. But when any district or parish was to be inclosed at once, then application was made to the Commissioners; an award was issued, allotments were set out to satisfy existing claims, and one allotment was made for the purposes of recreation for the people of the neighbourhood, varying in extent with the population of the parish. This arrangement had to be confirmed by Parliament, and it always had been confirmed until last year, when an exception, mentioned by the hon. Member for Finsbury, was made in the case of the parish of Chigwell. In this case the parish of Chigwell was compelled by a Committee of the House to give up fifty acres instead of five, and that for the benefit of the people of the metropolis; nor did fifty acres represent the whole extent to which Chigwell was mulcted before it could obtain the benefit of inclosure; these fifty acres were the best land on the waste, it had to be drained and levelled and fenced at the expense of the estate; so that Chigwell may be said to have paid the value of 150 acres of land of average value in the parish for the advantage of the power to inclose. Now, this was done entirely because the parish of Chigwell happened to be a pretty spot. Other parishes under exactly similar circumstances to Chigwell, with the exception of their beauty, obtained their in-closures under the very same Act, and were only compelled to give up five acres for recreative purposes for the inhabitants of their neighbourhood. It might be desirable that this fifty acres should be set apart, but it clearly was not just that one parish should thus pay so exorbitantly for an advantage, simply because it happened to be beautiful, while another parish could purchase the same advantage so cheaply. He quite agreed with the hon. Members who thought it desirable that there should be recreation grounds kept open for the people of the metropolis. He quite entered into the feeling of the hon. Member for Maidstone when he described the other day the pleasure he felt in seeing those people enjoying themselves in the forest; and although that enjoyment was not entirely without some drawback—for he found some of his church-going constituents rather scandalized at the joviality which characterized their proceedings on Sunday—yet he was free to admit that Epping Forest was a very proper place for such recreative grounds. The question, however, still remained—who was to find them? It was hardly right that private individuals should be compelled to give up their property for this purpose. The interests in what are now Victoria and Battersea Parks had no doubt been purchased, and so compensation should be given for rights appropriated for such purposes in Epping Forest. He thought it might be a proper subject for inquiry by the Committee, if appointed, how far the Crown was morally bound to provide such recreative grounds. His own opinion was, that when there were crown lands uninclosed in proper places, there tracts should be set out for the public use; but where it was desirable to take such recreative grounds from private persons—lords of manors— there compensation should be made from the revenues of the Crown.

THE ATTORNEY GENERAL

said, he was bound to admit that there were many subjects which might be inquired into by Select Committees with great advantage, but among them certainly did not come technical and strictly legal rights. The objection which the Government entertained to the Motion, and had expressed to the hon. Gentleman who made it, was, that from the particular terms in which it was couched it sought very plainly to erect a Select Committee of that House into a court of judicature for the purpose of inquiring into, and expressing an opinion with reference to the rights of individuals and of the Crown. Nothing could be more inconvenient than such a course of procedure, and nothing more dangerous than the precedent which would be set if the House should accede to the Motion of the hon. Gentleman in the terms in which it was expressed. The hon. Member proposed that the Committee should inquire into the legality of recent inclosures. That was a strictly legal question. The inclosures were legal and justifiable in point of law, or they were not. If they were legal and justifiable, no ground of complaint could be made; but if they were illegal and could not be maintained, there was a proper tribunal to appeal to. That tribunal, unlike a Committee, would not exhaust itself with the mere expression of an opinion, but would record and enforce its judgment by ordinary process of law. An inquiry by a Committee, therefore, would not be efficacious even if convenient. But a Select Committee had not the powers and machinery of a court of law, even for the purpose of inquiry. It could not compel the attendance of witnesses, or administer an oath. The inquiry, therefore, would be defective as well as inconclusive in its result. He denied the existence of the rights which the hon. Member for Finsbury alleged. It was said the poor foresters had not the means of asserting and maintaining their rights in the Court of Exchequer, and therefore a Select, Committee should be appointed. If that were so, Committees, already tolerably well occupied, would find a vast accretion of employment in inefficacious inquiries into the alleged rights of parties who were too poor to prosecute their suits in the ordinary courts of justice. He was not, however, disposed to deny that some inquiry was needed, and therefore he would make a proposition which he had already communicated to the hon. Member, and which he thought would satisfy all parties. Instead of the hon. Member's proposition he would suggest that a Committee be appointed— To inquire into the condition and management of the Royal Forests in Essex, and into any inclosures which may have taken place therein since the Report of the Commissioners of 1850; and to consider whether it is expedient to take any steps for preserving open spots in such Forests.

MR. TORRENS

said, he was quite willing to withdraw his Motion, and accept the proposition of the hon. and learned Gentleman.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.