Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/223

 no right to cut them down, has a remedy by an action.

Such cases show that the class called commoners in the English law books had a recognized position in the English constitutional polity; and it would seem that a scheme which made use of the authority of the English Parliament for converting those waste lands and common fields in which the poorer classes of the community, though they had not the property of the soil, had such a beneficial interest in the land "as to feed their beasts, to catch fish, to dig turf, to cut wood, or the like," was a scheme somewhat analogous to that of Sancho Panza when governor of the island of Barataria. It is said by the witnesses examined before the Parliamentary Committee of 1844, on the inclosure of Commons, that judicious inclosure would make a large portion of common lands much more productive. This may be a tolerably safe prediction; but it has two aspects. Its productiveness may be advantageous to some and disadvantageous to others. Sancho Panza's plan of deriving