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Commissioner, Mr. Barclay, resides at Woodford
in the midst of the Forest, and is on terms of
social intimacy with many of the fortunate gentle-
men whose unlawful enclosures are thus to be
turned into gold mines, and it is not perhaps
in human nature that he could be insensible to
the influences which association with neighbours
and friends will certainly have in their favour.
Nor, indeed, is the appointment of an Assistant
Enclosure Commissioner in the person of Mr. Wood,
the Chairman of the Commission, a very happy one
to protect the public rights. What the Enclosure
Commissioners think of the public in connection
with open spaces is but too well known by their
proceedings. Let this be illustrated by an example :—
Some few years ago the Enclosure Commissioners
submitted a scheme to Parliament for the enclosure of
Epsom Common. Tho House of Commons threw out
the proposal, but it was supported by a report of the
Enclosure Commissioners containing this passage :—
" The enclosure may destroy one of the principal
" features of the district when viewed from the
" premises of the objectors, and houses of inferior
" description may spring up and may further pre-
" judicially affect the view, but I submit that this
" indirect and remote injury, if any, ought not to be
" allowed to interpose a bar to the reclamation of so
" large and valuable a tract as Epsom Common."