Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/222

 In reference to the conversion into private property of what was not private property, it may be remarked here that, according to the system of law established in England at the Conquest, in those waste lands, which are usually called commons, the property of the soil is generally in the lord of the manor. But in common fields the property of the soil is in the particular tenants.

There is evidence that though the lords of manors were the predominant powers in regard to the land question according to the law of England, the commoners, as they were termed, were not altogether powerless. Thus, to give an illustration or two, the right of the commoners to the pasturage may be subservient to the right of the lord of the manor; for if the lord of the manor has immemorially built houses or dug clay-pits upon the common without any regard to the extent of the herbage, the immemorial exercise of such acts is evidence that the lord reserved that right to himself, when he granted the right of pasturage to the commoners. And if a lord of a manor plant trees upon a common, a commoner, though he has