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I am sure. But I have a little advice that I am going to offer through you
for Mr. Tewson. I do not know whether he is in Court or not; if not, I
hope he will profit by it. I should advise him to take his wife and family
on Sunday morning to an East End church—in Bethnal Green, Shoreditch,
or any of those places where the recreator, I am happy and thankful to say,
does come from and enjoy the scenes that are spread before him. He can
go there to church with his family; they will be very pleased and proud to see
him; and I am sure he will hear some homely doctrines which I hope will put
a better state of things into his mind. When you take the term recreator,
it will work two ways. You may spell it re-creator. If I could re-create
some people I would put some better ideas into their minds. That is
my own personal experience upon the subject. Now, the fact is that
forty years ago I used to go and recreate myself in the blackberry orchards
and in the hyacinth gardens of the poor, and on this very land which
is now withheld by Mr. Gellatly's illegal fence, and I must say I had
a wonderful deal more enjoyment and recreation upon that ground than
I have now, because I cannot go and recreate myself amongst Mr.
Gellatly's potatoes, which he described so feelingly to you. He grows his
potatoes here and he grows his cabbages there, and he puts his cows
in that place and in the other place. I cannot do so now. I am
debarred from that enjoyment. Neither can my cattle go there. I only
mention this, sir, in order to show you that I was acquainted with this
place many years before Mr. Gellatly unfortunately, I think, for us, went to
reside there, and was first imbued with the idea that it would be a very
nice thing to have a large piece of the forest. Some years ago I had
an offer made to me : " Why do you not go and get a piece of the forest ?"
My reply was : " It is not good enough for me ; when I desire to have a
"piece of land, I will pay for it in the proper way," So I bought
land there for the purpose of fighting for my rights. I bought it at a
public sale, and I did not conclude the sale until the title was made
perfectly free, fair, and sound. Now, I did ask—I was not aware that it
was against professional etiquette—to be allowed to call a witness or two,
and the witnesses would have been simply to prove the fact—which you
may take my word for, although I have no witnesses—that there was a
hanging wood upon Mr. Gellatly's ground which occupied the slope of the
hill; and there was a valuable pond or reservoir at the bottom of that
wood, which Mr. Gillatly destroyed. It was considered by many persons
to be a place of great beauty, and certainly I myself enjoyed it much more,
although there were many pollards and blackberry bushes, than I do Mr.
Gellatly's corn and his potatoes. It may be all very well looked at in the
utilitarian point of view; but at the same time it is not so pleasing to the
eye ; at all events it is not so pleasing to me, knowing that they are growing
upon my ground. That is the charge I intend to bring distinctly against
Mr. Gellatly, and he cannot deny it.
Sir, it did my heart good to hear Sir William Harcourt refuse in the
manly and proper manner which he did, to consider this claim for fencing
or devastating, or destroying the land from its original beautiful character.
It certainly did arouse some feelings of indignation in my mind to hear a
gentleman blandly stating how many hundreds of pounds he had paid for
this, that, and the other, simply destroying the land from its original use;
when he gives it up and leaves it to us it will be not so good or valuable as
it was before, unless it goes through the process of being laid down in