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scheme. That payment was made into Court for the express purpose of
recompensing the commoners and the intercommoners. I suppose it was
never applied for, and it remains there now. Of course it has increased
considerably. It was never applied for, because the numbers entitled to it
were so enormous, and the fact is that there was no one in particular to
direct it, and therefore this sum of £500 remained there, and was never
used or applied to the purposes for which it was paid into Court; it
remains in Court, but it will go into the fund, I suppose, for the preservation
of the Forest.
Sir, the cases of the two gentlemen which you are discussing now
appear to be arranged in this way. I have heard it mentioned before that
Counsel's opinion has been taken; but as you yourself, I think, noticed,
the fact of inter-common rights has been carefully excluded from the cases
submitted to those gentlemen, and therefore their opinion was of no value
at all.
The ARBITRATOR : I did not say carefully excluded or designedly
excluded, but in point of fact it was not submitted to Counsel.
Mr. BURNEY : Yes. In my own opinion, therefore, that is a very
bad case with which they start; and here you have the case of Mr.
Gellatly, who states he relied upon his own opinion. Now, there are legal
traditions about gentlemen who are their own attorneys. It may possibly
be applied to me. I daresay it will be if there is a chance. But I suppose
there is no doubt that Mr. Gellatly mentally shut his eyes to that fact.
Or at all events he would not see the fact, being his own adviser, that
these rights did exist; and he must have shut his eyes very close if he did
not see them, for the agitation was complete and thorough enough, I can
assure you. I daresay I may be viewed in this matter by Mr. Gellatly and
other gentlemen as a sort of fierce and truculent aggressor, as a man who
is doing a thing which he had much better leave alone, and which he, in
fact, had better not do. What has been Mr. Gellatly's course in this
matter ? Mr. Gellatly went up with a number of gentlemen to that mild
and amiable minister, Mr. Ayrton, and what did he and those gentlemen
represent there ? He represented what was simply and positively in my
opinion a libel, and it was such a libel that I had strong intentions to
apply for a criminal information on the subject. This is what he said to
Mr. Ayrton.
The ARBITRATOR: What have you got there ? Is it a news-
paper extract ?
Mr. BURNEY: Yes, sir. He said that I and the other gentlemen
acting with me wanted to pull down houses, and transform what was now
a town into a howling wilderness. I think those are the exact words of
the report in the newspapers, although it is not exactly so in the Times.
These are the words in the Times:—"There are scattered through the
" Forest various churches, chapels, schools, roads, and public buildings,
" which, having cost at least a million, were now threatened by a plea that
" the sites should now revert into forestal waste." Further on he says :—
" They intended, not only to keep open a very large area for recreation,
" but to throw back into the waste the portions already occupied by
" dwellings." I say that is about as gross a libel as ever was promulgated
in public against a body of gentlemen—myself amongst the number. We