12
between the lords inter se. Suppose, for example, two
manors, A and B, each containing 100 acres, worth, say,
as enclosed land, £10,000. The lords' interest in each
ease, taken at a tenth, should be £1,000. But suppose
that in manor A the lord had sold 50 acres of his waste
for £1,000. Under the Commissioners' Scheme he
would be allowed to retain that sum, and would pocket
an additional £500 for the 50 acres remaining, thus
getting £1,500 in all, whereas the lord of manor B, who
had sold nothing, would only get £1,000. On what
principle could this be justified ? It would, in fact, be
offering a premium to wrongdoing. The proper course,
he submitted, would be to credit each lord with one-
tenth of the value of his whole waste, including all
which he had sold illegally; to make him state what he
had received for such illegal sales, and to hand him the
balance. By this means the several lords would be put
on an equal footing one with another, and those who
had sold would not be profiting by their own wrong.
The learned counsel further objected to the provisions
of the Scheme relating to enclosures which had been
sold by the lords and were now in the hands of grantees.
It was provided by clause 14 of their Scheme that these
enclosures should remain enclosed, subject to a rent-
charge equal to nine-tenths of their agricultural value,
and subject to a power conferred upon the future Con-
servators of the Forest to purchase them at their
marketable value with the consent of the First Commis-
sioner of Works within three years. Mr. Stephen
respectfully submitted in the first place that these
provisions were not within the powers of the Commis-
sioners. By section 12 of the Act appointing them they
were empowered to settle a scheme for the preservation
of the waste lands of the Forest, and by the 17th section
of the same Act the waste lands were defined as includ-
ing all unlawful enclosures. The Commissioners' duty
therefore, was to preserve the waste lands unlawfully
enclosed as part of the Forest, and they had no power
to take them out of the Forest and to give a good title
to them. No less than 760 acres within the scope of the
decree of the Master of the Bolls would, under the
Commissioners' scheme, remain enclosed. Further, in